Sure, let's believe there is some neutral news site that we can all agree to use for news....
But, first, let's agree to get rid of the partisan sources: NPR, CNN, nytimes, dailykos, slate, politico, washingtonpost on the left foxnews, breitbart, redstate, hotair, instapundit on the right
What is left?
Thanks for pointing out the need to ban references to these sites....it's a good things our founding fathers agreed to ban unapproved speech...we definitely should not trust even our adults to properly filter out biased news sources....
Republican members of the house were elected to do two things:
a) cut spending, as the house has primary responsibility in the constitution for the budget....this is where they will frequently make a stand. Unfortunately, the democrats boosted the budget substantially using the financial crisis as an excuse and have yet to restore normal spending levels. They also refuse to follow the normal budget process. When the republicans in the house pass a budget for negotiations, the senate sends it back with major spending increases and then refuse to consider any cuts. This forces the house to make a decision every year about whether they are willing to shut down the government over the senates irresponsibility and intrangence. We're lucky the republicans have been as patient as they have the last several years.
b) Stop or significantly reduce the overwhelming sweep of obamacare. The president and senate has refused to negotiate.
Given the arrogance of the above behavior by the senate and president, I see no reason whatsoever why the house should play mr nice....they have the responsibility for choosing which laws are funded. They've chosen to fund everything else but the health care law. That's generous. If you want to change that, ask your senator and president to negotiate.
Oh, stop that junk about obamacare originally being a republican idea. Did you ever say something stupid and than have someone else make it 100x worse, proclaim it loudly to the world, and then blame it all as your idea?
Yes, one republican think tank suggested that an exchange type system where people are required to purchase health care might be an alternative to Clinton's health proposals....it went nowhere in the federal government, and the think tank later said they were stupid to have suggested it.
Romney implemented his own system in Massachussets without approval from natioanl republicans, but a) MA is a blue state and is far from mainstream republican opinion, b) Romneycare was put in place to prevent democrats in Massachussets from implementing a far worse system, and c) Many republicans refused to vote for Romney in the presidential election due to his involvement in romneycare. Lastly, there is quite a bit of feedback that suggests Massachussets has had to make major changes to keep their system functional, and despite that the cost has been much higher than originally assumed. Many of the proponents are no longer as fervant.
That democrats are now saying obamacare is based on republican ideas and thus the republicans should approve it is pure partisan drivel.
The house is not obligated to fund any law. It has chosen to fund everything in government, but some aspects of a single law that relates to the federal government takeover of the health care industry.
The senate has decided that funding for that law is so important, that they're willing to shutdown the government over it.
+1 Apparently someone at Yahoo just thought if they could get enough new flickr users, it would bring in more profit for yahoo.....so they stupidly went for an over the top UI + essentially unlimited uploading plan that has made it too cumbersome for established users to keep using the site for what they were doing before (sharing photos, participating in discussion groups, and commenting on/browsing other photos)...
Your refutal of the maxime shareholder profit argument may be technically correct, but it's probably simplistic....whenever an officer of a company makes a decision that can be questioned as not maximizing profit, he is opening himself up to the possibility of a shareholder lawsuit. If the officer is the CEO, the risks are even greater.
So guess what happens...the ceo is advised by his lawyer how to behave, the ceo advises his subordinate managers how to behave, and the a new culture trickles down...
Bah, things could be worse.....consider being a republican in the northern portion of San Diego: City Council Rep is a democrat --pretty much votes opposite of what I would City Mayor is a corrupt democrat -- he's bringing city business to a halt and making San Diego a laughing stalk nationwide State Legislature is entirely controlled by democrats and veto proof majority -- destroying the economy of the state State Governor is democrat and a great liar saying he has balanced the state budget while just pushing the expenses into future years, raising taxes, or making county governments take over state responsibilities. Congressional Representative is a democrat - says the right thing, but always votes opposite of what I would State Senators (both) are democrats -- By my standards, I consider both of them crazy National President is a hardcore democrat
There isn't anyone in power from my local city to state to congress to president that in anyway represents my beliefs...And, I get to pay high taxes for this representation...
I stopped going to the movie theater a few years ago, like many.....now if I like a movie, I wait for it to be released for the Kindle Fire and watch it there or download it from Amazon to the tivo connected to the plasma tv(only tv in the house which is seeing less and less use).
In any case, to get me to purchase, a movie should have most of the following traits:
Plot -- Actually exist, ideally I want to be surprised rather than guess the ending within the first 20 minutes
Relevance - Zero Dark Thirty wasn't an awesome movie, but it was very relevant and therefore got the cash.
Artistry/Time - Movies should take as much time as needed to tell their story and be comprehensive with multiple conflicts/concepts/etc, I'm not going to pay just because this years superhero movie is out..... Older classic movies were much longer than most movies today, and even the best movies of the last twenty years have been somewhat longer than the normal movie that is released which must be between 100-120 minutes regardless of how much has to be cut.
Politics -- Movies are produced to reflect the politics of whatever the college age generation is at the time (they are the ones who have the time and motivation to go to the theater)...In the 80's, we had some modestly conservative movies come out, but still most movies showed both sides of issues and tried not to be too patronizing....now, most movies lean substantially left....and talk down to anyone who disagrees... If one isn't an eco-fascist, Avatar loses a significant amount of its appeal.
Character -- Movies are so expensive these days that one will feel guilty buying it just for oneself, which means that movies that I feel comfortable sharing with my kids are more likely to get the cash..... A significant number of movies are failing here.
The problem with this justification, even if it is true, is that it assumes that we can trust our government with ever increasing amounts of power and surveilance over lives despite the fact that we know that more power = more corruption, that government will inherently misuse the power and tools it has access to, and that polarization/decline in morality in our culture is resulting in our leaders feeling the have more leeway to push the boundaries of what is permissable. And, just timing wise....this leak coming right after we've found out that the president has been using the IRS to punish his political enemies and ensure his opponents power was reduced during the recent election....
Basically, what you are saying might make sense if the culture and ethics of Americans and our leaders was beyond reproof, with the government we have --- it is more likely to be used to supress domestic dissent (to maintain internal power) rather than to stop our external enemies.
In my experience: - For business and critical home office connections, reliability is the single most important aspect when evaluating internet connectivity options - Due to the telecom deregulation bill in the 90's, the major phone companies have essentially killed off all competition for DSL and relegated DSL as a consumer technology where the emphasis is high bandwidth, low cost....reliability has plummeted, phone company can arbitrarily take down DSL for 24-48hrs to do upgrades/maintenance and there is nothing you can do about it other than get a pittance level SLA refunds later. Promised repair times are meaningless for DSL. - Cable Internet Connections are even worse, they are shared and latency can vary by time of day....if you are lucky, you can upgrade to a business cable connection...but you are unlilkey to get a high uplink speed and cable companies were really not designed to provide good customer service. Some cable companies also offer fiber or gigE services which are not shared and provide real advantages...but this is hit or miss based on your location. And, until recently -- too expensive. We've just reached the point where they are a better deal than cheap bonded t-1. - Bonded T-1 historically been the best solution for those needing 4.5Mbps or less, 2-3 seperate dedicated lines and the routers automatically adjust if one or several lines go up/down...packets fragments are reordered and checksummed on each end, there are good built in diagnostics, and phone companies are usually exceptionally diligent about fixing most T-1 issues within 4hrs. Bonded T-1's are one of the few areas where you can find reasonable SLA's....e.g. get much of a months bill refunded if service is down for an extended period. Unfortunately, bonded t-1's are becoming somewhat less reliable as customer centric t-1 companies like speakeasy are being purchased by the telecoms and then sucked into crappy business practices that companies like megapath offer.
So, bonded t1 is OK for the time being, but I expect most customers are in process or planning a switch to fiber/gigE once they can get the SLA's and availability at the locations of interest.
Back when electronics or anything new/important came with massive well written documentation... 2nd or 3rd grade, Ti-99/4a, Basic Programming Book that came with the computer Litterally the first non-childrens book I ever read It took me 2 years to get through the entire book By 4th-5th grade, I was programming my own clones of whatever was the popular game of the day on a timex sinclair w/ 16K ram extender Compute and similar magazines were a great help My dad was disappointed that I had stayed with basic rather than learning assembly language.... Later got a PC and learned C
There are a bunch of trade offs when producing a 3d printable model: - artistic versus engineering versus programmable ui - how much resolution is in the final print - how many vertexes/etc do you want for complex objects - how important exact dimensions/etc are for you - how much time do you have to create the design
In general: - If you must be able to let anyone without experience quickly produce a design, tinkercad is by far the best software to use. It's also good for quick modifications to designs made in other software. - If you want really fine resolution/high number of vertexes and have a long time to test out design changes and willing to use a programmer based ui, openscad is where it is at. - If you want the best open source ui for artists, use blender - If exact dimensions and engineering ui is what you need, use a cad program....I haven't come up with what is the best...there doesn't seem to be a clear winner here. - If you need to quickly fix problems in designs produced by other software, use netfabb.
If by feature size, one is referring to the nozzle width, than 0.4mm is just the default nozzle supplied by makerbot...I've heard that one can install smaller nozzles if needed...however, it usually doesn't make enough of a difference to be worth the longer print times.
As far as layer height goes, the most common printing resolution for a makerbot replicator 1 is 0.15-0.2mm and I've heard of a few users getting down to 0.05mm - however it usually isn't worthwhile, and 0.1mm is the lowest frequently used - and even 0.1mm is painful printing time wise. Honestly, I'm not sure there is much point in wanting better than 0.1mm as that is already an amazingly good detail level -- even 0.15mm produces great prints and I never see a point to want better.
My understanding about the advantage of the form1 is that printing time is significantly reduced for high resolution prints....whereas with traditional makerbots, the better the resolution the longer the print. Also, the formlabs allows printing of more complex models that a makerbot might have creating reliably. Still, it hardly seems worth the hassle in most cases.
I still see FDM printing as the way to go, the trick is just getting it more reliable with durable printers and at reasonable price while not going proprietery or overcharging for materials. Current makerbots are not really consumer market ready....they require lots of tweaking and maintenance.
Desktop processors sometimes do die abruptly.....replacing a cpu and remounting the fan is much easier than yanking out the motherboard as things currently stand. We had this happen on an older workstation with high quality motherboard...after a few years, the cpu starting giving errors..replaced the cpu, all was fine. Replacement CPU was easy to find and cheap....if we had to replace the motherboard, it would have been much more work and also required replacing ram.
It's nice and all that Lego might be releasing an official design of rover, but models of the curiousity rover for 3d printing have been available for roughly a week now already and are begining to enter 2nd/3rd gen revisions...we just gave one away this morning that we printed last night for a childs birthday party. Lego these days is about robotics and First Lego League Competitions....for models, we can print or create our own....same for legos pieces themselves. If you can afford to buy your child the occasional lego model and various sets which are very expensive, then you can probably afford a 3d printer which opens up many more possibilities.
Type 2 generally means that the body has developed higher levels of resistance of insulin and that the resistance has over time caused the pancreas to work so hard that not enough insulin is being produced at the time of diagnoses that body blood glucose levels are no longer kept within healthy parameters which causes the body to begin to experience accelerated aging. Type 2 patients usually also have a pancreas that is no longer capable of producing close to the normal amount insulin (the system has essentially given up and can't rebuild). So, two problems that feed on each other in a negative feedback loop...and only one is fixed by lowering weight.
In lucky cases, where diabetes is caught early and the pancreas has not yet been irreversibly damaged...reducing weight on its own cause a resulting reduction in insulin resistance and effectively 'cure' type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately in most cases, and especially because diabetes is diagnosed in the USA via blood fasting glucose levels, those that are diagnoesed with t2 diabetes already have incurable damage to the pancreas. There is currently no known way to cure this...unless science/medicine can find a way to fix insulin production levels of the pancreas without constant stimulation from oral meds/etc (metformin is the most commonly prescribed). A better form of diagnoses is regular hba1c tests which may detect diabetes before the irreversible damage to the pancreas has happened. Also, not all increases to insulin resistance are a result of weight,....drinking excessive soda which has carmel flavoring which increases insulin resistance, not getting enough exercise on its own mean the body doesn't get lowered insulin resistance, and other things that might be associated with those that are overweight have a huge role that are completely seperate from the weight itself.
Yep, this is all about rising chinese/pakistan tensions with india.
Pakistan has signaled that it is breaking off attempts to work with the USA because a good portion of the pakistan population wants the western world to go away and the rest of the population is hoping that if pakistan doesn't cooperate americans will give up on afghanistan sooner w/o any negative impact which means that pakistani's can have a larger influence on afghan politics.
Meanwhile, the chinese have come in and offered to be pakistan's new best friend. Mostly because China wants to increase its influence in the region and the greatest local competitor to chinese influence is india, of which there have been several border wars/skirmishes in the not so distant past. Pakistan and china are logical allies now -- it's a double win, lessen american influence -- encircle and limit indian power.
China is rapidly bumping up its military and adding to its forces on the india border -- pakistan will be able to free up troops if afghanistan falls under its sway and therefore have more troops to put towards india. Naturally, india is alarmed and wants new weapons NOW...france can deliver quicker. That's all there is to it.
Both parties attract those who are power hungry to their elected ranks: - Republicans unfortunately have a tendency to allow politicians who are being paid by big business who want to gut all regulatory oversight and put in place laws that protect them. These guys certainly are as you describe. - Democrats have the equal and opposite problem - politicians who are eager to give away other peoples money for projects and programs that don't work, as long as it gets them elected and in the elite so they can become the new "ruling class". When challenged about the fact that they are bankrupting the country, they respond with fake data/arguments or simply imply that some magic fairy will pay for it all ("the rich"), etc.
I find both very bad, but I don't blame the parties per say for the problem as much as the american voter for letting them get away with it. I also still think most voters intend to put someone who follows the party ideals I stated above into office, they just don't research enough or vote party line rather than review each candidate individually.
That's one way to look at it....I see things a slightly different: *Republicans believe that nothing should hold back an individual or group from achieving success and happiness provided that it is done in a way that is not that harmful to society or others - also, that ideally all individuals and families should be positive role models. Furthermore, republicans generally believe that each section of society has a proper role and size where the family is responsible for giving kids a good start in life and being the primary resource for handling emergencies and major events, that the individual is responsible for what he achieves and his health, that religion and churches should look after the moral health of society and also be the venue through which most general welfare and charitable activities be handled, that government be limited to providing basic infrastructure and a neutral safe ground for everyone to interact, and lastly that when decisions in government be made that it be at the level closest to those impacted (e.g. local control of schools rather than state/federal). *Democrats believe the republican "traditional approach" has failed or otherwise lets too many people out in the cold. Their arguments are more from the emotional side (e.g. everyone has a right to good health, it is better that we all have the same standard of living than that some do too much better than others, that too many people are not capable of governing their own life and we should use government to ensure they are both cared for and that their actions be for the general good).
Both approaches have their pluses and minuses.....I see the sensible middle ground being that for society to succeed long term it must blend both, enough of the republican approach to have wealth, and enough of the democrat approach for everyone to feel they've had a fair chance at life and not rebel.
Politics is more intense now simply because the USA is at the start or middle of an economic decline and there are two approaches being discussed. Republicans want to do everything possible to recover growth and wealth (no matter how painful it will be). Democrats are more fatalistic and believe that we should be directing our attention towards managing the decline in such a way that no one group gets hurt too bad, and that if any group must be hurt -- it should be at the higher end. Unfortunately, these two approaches are somewhat the opposite of each other...
If it was on PBS, I'd be worried that it would be biased.....
I give up even trying to watch charlie rose on pbs these days....... whenever reporters are brought in to discuss current events, there are always 2 from the editorial wing of the new york times, and 3 from other left leaning news outlets and the conversation always goes around to complaining about tea partiers.
I used to watch frontline, newshour, and other shows on pbs and the BBC....haven't been able to for the last 10 years, especially as even the science shows are no longer willing to consider all sides of an argument, and the bias is as much in what issues are covered as in the content and who they consult as experts. Pretty much ever since gore lost the election, and the AP decided that that fair fact based reporting wasn't informing voters properly, the closest I've found to fair reporting is the wall street journal (assuming you skip the editorial pages) and focus just on the news.
Fox also isn't that bad in the sense that they actually are open about their biases.....CNN/etc not so much.
The black line has been nothing but problematic for me(2TB, SATA 3Gbps).
Purchased 2 of them, both failed, RMA on the first has been working reliably, had to RMA the 2nd 3 times and it kept failing...no point in RMA'ing any further. Yes, I switched cables, power, and controllers to ensure it was the drives fault. From what I've read, western digital is doing only a minimal job on repairing RMA'd drives and then just sending them back out as re-certified and truncating warranties on rma'd drives down from the 5yr original guarantee to just 90 days.
Strangely enough, not a single problem with the either the seagate enterprise constellation drives (2TB) or the western digital RE4 enterprise drives (also 2TB). Dozens of these in production, some for a year now, and smartmon shows no issues except that while the western digital firmware is not 100% compatible w/ some controllers, seagate is compatible but trades that off for slightly less performance.
Unfortunately, amazon caved into the demands of the large publishers and is now allowing publishers to set prices. Naturally, the publishers have started to test having ebook prices of popular new releases actually be $1-2 higher than the equivalent hardcover and after the release has been out awhile reduce the ebook price to be just the same as paperback. So, in effect we move from the situation a year ago where kindle readers were receiving a discount on books and publishers could complain that the future of publishing was in peril - we now have a situation where kindle readers are being pushed as an extra money maker - kindle readers are paying a premium for fast access to books above and beyond the cost of the kindle itself. Somewhat of an interesting situation where if a kindle owner has an amazon prime account, he is actually paying amazon extra not to kill a tree and burn additional energy to send him the physical copy.
Why does anyone care how much taxes companies pay? if a company is rich so what? The money is worthless until it is returned to the investors or employees, and then it is very highly taxed. Short of controlling the flow of money across national borders, I can't see why anyone should be looking at how much taxes the companies pay rather than how much taxes the individual investors and employees pay.
As another kindle user, yes, ebooks tend to be cheaper and it certainly saves $$ never to be paying full hardback pricing ever again. Honestly, I've stopped buying any physical books at all. Everything goes to Kindle, and unless I really want a particular book, I never pay more than $15 for one (non-technical books) and most of the time pricing is in the $6.99 - $9.99 range.
Honestly, the biggest problem I've had is that while most of the books that I want are available in kindle edition, not all are. Also, I've had some issues finding certain o'reilly titles in kindle version. I'm guessing they took awhile to ramp up kindle support, prefering readers to use safari.com or buy online from oreilly.com. Neither is really an option for me. I want the ability for Amazon to manage my library and to download/redownload my books to whatever kindle I am using (I also hate the idea of paying safari to rent access to books)...I can take small kindle to gym and read while on treadmill, and then use larger kindle at work for the same book (and I dont have to find where I left off, amazon syncs that for me along with any notes/bookmarks/etc). However, this only works if book was purchased from amazon.
I'm honestly fine with all the DRM/etc limitations of Kindle. I'll trade off any functionality loss for the lower purchase price. And, rather than having to search several bookcases at home for book I want later on, I can quickly search my kindle library for whatever I need.
* If you move your infrastructure in with them and later lose confidence in their abilities for whatever reason, how quickly and easily can you terminate and move out w/o all the hassle of pre-paying to end of term? This should be your biggest requirement. No matter how much do diligence you do on technical matters prior to moving in, things change...the datacenter provider could have financial problems, sudden facility problems, lose key critical staff, etc. Your contract needs to allow you the option to terminate when you reasonably lose confidence in their abilities w/o a billion hoops or outlandish costs.
* Power pricing and limitations on how much they are allowed to pass on additional costs from utilities during term of contract.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, let's believe there is some neutral news site that we can all agree to use for news....
But, first, let's agree to get rid of the partisan sources:
NPR, CNN, nytimes, dailykos, slate, politico, washingtonpost on the left
foxnews, breitbart, redstate, hotair, instapundit on the right
What is left?
Thanks for pointing out the need to ban references to these sites....it's a good things our founding fathers agreed to ban unapproved speech...we definitely should not trust even our adults to properly filter out biased news sources....
Republican members of the house were elected to do two things:
a) cut spending, as the house has primary responsibility in the constitution for the budget....this is where they will frequently make a stand. Unfortunately, the democrats boosted the budget substantially using the financial crisis as an excuse and have yet to restore normal spending levels. They also refuse to follow the normal budget process. When the republicans in the house pass a budget for negotiations, the senate sends it back with major spending increases and then refuse to consider any cuts. This forces the house to make a decision every year about whether they are willing to shut down the government over the senates irresponsibility and intrangence. We're lucky the republicans have been as patient as they have the last several years.
b) Stop or significantly reduce the overwhelming sweep of obamacare. The president and senate has refused to negotiate.
Given the arrogance of the above behavior by the senate and president, I see no reason whatsoever why the house should play mr nice....they have the responsibility for choosing which laws are funded. They've chosen to fund everything else but the health care law. That's generous. If you want to change that, ask your senator and president to negotiate.
Oh, stop that junk about obamacare originally being a republican idea. Did you ever say something stupid and than have someone else make it 100x worse, proclaim it loudly to the world, and then blame it all as your idea?
Yes, one republican think tank suggested that an exchange type system where people are required to purchase health care might be an alternative to Clinton's health proposals....it went nowhere in the federal government, and the think tank later said they were stupid to have suggested it.
Romney implemented his own system in Massachussets without approval from natioanl republicans, but a) MA is a blue state and is far from mainstream republican opinion, b) Romneycare was put in place to prevent democrats in Massachussets from implementing a far worse system, and c) Many republicans refused to vote for Romney in the presidential election due to his involvement in romneycare. Lastly, there is quite a bit of feedback that suggests Massachussets has had to make major changes to keep their system functional, and despite that the cost has been much higher than originally assumed. Many of the proponents are no longer as fervant.
That democrats are now saying obamacare is based on republican ideas and thus the republicans should approve it is pure partisan drivel.
The house is not obligated to fund any law. It has chosen to fund everything in government, but some aspects of a single law that relates to the federal government takeover of the health care industry.
The senate has decided that funding for that law is so important, that they're willing to shutdown the government over it.
That's why the government shut down.
+1 Apparently someone at Yahoo just thought if they could get enough new flickr users, it would bring in more profit for yahoo.....so they stupidly went for an over the top UI + essentially unlimited uploading plan that has made it too cumbersome for established users to keep using the site for what they were doing before (sharing photos, participating in discussion groups, and commenting on/browsing other photos)...
Your refutal of the maxime shareholder profit argument may be technically correct, but it's probably simplistic....whenever an officer of a company makes a decision that can be questioned as not maximizing profit, he is opening himself up to the possibility of a shareholder lawsuit. If the officer is the CEO, the risks are even greater.
So guess what happens...the ceo is advised by his lawyer how to behave, the ceo advises his subordinate managers how to behave, and the a new culture trickles down...
No one is to blame but the system here.
Bah, things could be worse.....consider being a republican in the northern portion of San Diego:
City Council Rep is a democrat --pretty much votes opposite of what I would
City Mayor is a corrupt democrat -- he's bringing city business to a halt and making San Diego a laughing stalk nationwide
State Legislature is entirely controlled by democrats and veto proof majority -- destroying the economy of the state
State Governor is democrat and a great liar saying he has balanced the state budget while just pushing the expenses into future years, raising taxes, or making county governments take over state responsibilities.
Congressional Representative is a democrat - says the right thing, but always votes opposite of what I would
State Senators (both) are democrats -- By my standards, I consider both of them crazy
National President is a hardcore democrat
There isn't anyone in power from my local city to state to congress to president that in anyway represents my beliefs...And, I get to pay high taxes for this representation...
I stopped going to the movie theater a few years ago, like many.....now if I like a movie, I wait for it to be released for the Kindle Fire and watch it there or download it from Amazon to the tivo connected to the plasma tv(only tv in the house which is seeing less and less use).
In any case, to get me to purchase, a movie should have most of the following traits:
Plot -- Actually exist, ideally I want to be surprised rather than guess the ending within the first 20 minutes
Relevance - Zero Dark Thirty wasn't an awesome movie, but it was very relevant and therefore got the cash.
Artistry/Time - Movies should take as much time as needed to tell their story and be comprehensive with multiple conflicts/concepts/etc, I'm not going to pay just because this years superhero movie is out..... Older classic movies were much longer than most movies today, and even the best movies of the last twenty years have been somewhat longer than the normal movie that is released which must be between 100-120 minutes regardless of how much has to be cut.
Politics -- Movies are produced to reflect the politics of whatever the college age generation is at the time (they are the ones who have the time and motivation to go to the theater)...In the 80's, we had some modestly conservative movies come out, but still most movies showed both sides of issues and tried not to be too patronizing....now, most movies lean substantially left....and talk down to anyone who disagrees... If one isn't an eco-fascist, Avatar loses a significant amount of its appeal.
Character -- Movies are so expensive these days that one will feel guilty buying it just for oneself, which means that movies that I feel comfortable sharing with my kids are more likely to get the cash..... A significant number of movies are failing here.
The problem with this justification, even if it is true, is that it assumes that we can trust our government with ever increasing amounts of power and surveilance over lives despite the fact that we know that more power = more corruption, that government will inherently misuse the power and tools it has access to, and that polarization/decline in morality in our culture is resulting in our leaders feeling the have more leeway to push the boundaries of what is permissable. And, just timing wise....this leak coming right after we've found out that the president has been using the IRS to punish his political enemies and ensure his opponents power was reduced during the recent election....
Basically, what you are saying might make sense if the culture and ethics of Americans and our leaders was beyond reproof, with the government we have --- it is more likely to be used to supress domestic dissent (to maintain internal power) rather than to stop our external enemies.
In my experience: ....e.g. get much of a months bill refunded if service is down for an extended period. Unfortunately, bonded t-1's are becoming somewhat less reliable as customer centric t-1 companies like speakeasy are being purchased by the telecoms and then sucked into crappy business practices that companies like megapath offer.
- For business and critical home office connections, reliability is the single most important aspect when evaluating internet connectivity options
- Due to the telecom deregulation bill in the 90's, the major phone companies have essentially killed off all competition for DSL and relegated DSL as a consumer technology where the emphasis is high bandwidth, low cost....reliability has plummeted, phone company can arbitrarily take down DSL for 24-48hrs to do upgrades/maintenance and there is nothing you can do about it other than get a pittance level SLA refunds later. Promised repair times are meaningless for DSL.
- Cable Internet Connections are even worse, they are shared and latency can vary by time of day....if you are lucky, you can upgrade to a business cable connection...but you are unlilkey to get a high uplink speed and cable companies were really not designed to provide good customer service. Some cable companies also offer fiber or gigE services which are not shared and provide real advantages...but this is hit or miss based on your location. And, until recently -- too expensive. We've just reached the point where they are a better deal than cheap bonded t-1.
- Bonded T-1 historically been the best solution for those needing 4.5Mbps or less, 2-3 seperate dedicated lines and the routers automatically adjust if one or several lines go up/down...packets fragments are reordered and checksummed on each end, there are good built in diagnostics, and phone companies are usually exceptionally diligent about fixing most T-1 issues within 4hrs. Bonded T-1's are one of the few areas where you can find reasonable SLA's
So, bonded t1 is OK for the time being, but I expect most customers are in process or planning a switch to fiber/gigE once they can get the SLA's and availability at the locations of interest.
Back when electronics or anything new/important came with massive well written documentation...
2nd or 3rd grade, Ti-99/4a, Basic Programming Book that came with the computer
Litterally the first non-childrens book I ever read
It took me 2 years to get through the entire book
By 4th-5th grade, I was programming my own clones of whatever was the popular game of the day on a timex sinclair w/ 16K ram extender
Compute and similar magazines were a great help
My dad was disappointed that I had stayed with basic rather than learning assembly language....
Later got a PC and learned C
There are a bunch of trade offs when producing a 3d printable model:
- artistic versus engineering versus programmable ui
- how much resolution is in the final print
- how many vertexes/etc do you want for complex objects
- how important exact dimensions/etc are for you
- how much time do you have to create the design
In general:
- If you must be able to let anyone without experience quickly produce a design, tinkercad is by far the best software to use. It's also good for quick modifications to designs made in other software.
- If you want really fine resolution/high number of vertexes and have a long time to test out design changes and willing to use a programmer based ui, openscad is where it is at.
- If you want the best open source ui for artists, use blender
- If exact dimensions and engineering ui is what you need, use a cad program....I haven't come up with what is the best...there doesn't seem to be a clear winner here.
- If you need to quickly fix problems in designs produced by other software, use netfabb.
If by feature size, one is referring to the nozzle width, than 0.4mm is just the default nozzle supplied by makerbot...I've heard that one can install smaller nozzles if needed...however, it usually doesn't make enough of a difference to be worth the longer print times.
As far as layer height goes, the most common printing resolution for a makerbot replicator 1 is 0.15-0.2mm and I've heard of a few users getting down to 0.05mm - however it usually isn't worthwhile, and 0.1mm is the lowest frequently used - and even 0.1mm is painful printing time wise. Honestly, I'm not sure there is much point in wanting better than 0.1mm as that is already an amazingly good detail level -- even 0.15mm produces great prints and I never see a point to want better.
My understanding about the advantage of the form1 is that printing time is significantly reduced for high resolution prints....whereas with traditional makerbots, the better the resolution the longer the print. Also, the formlabs allows printing of more complex models that a makerbot might have creating reliably. Still, it hardly seems worth the hassle in most cases.
I still see FDM printing as the way to go, the trick is just getting it more reliable with durable printers and at reasonable price while not going proprietery or overcharging for materials. Current makerbots are not really consumer market ready....they require lots of tweaking and maintenance.
Desktop processors sometimes do die abruptly.....replacing a cpu and remounting the fan is much easier than yanking out the motherboard as things currently stand. We had this happen on an older workstation with high quality motherboard...after a few years, the cpu starting giving errors..replaced the cpu, all was fine. Replacement CPU was easy to find and cheap....if we had to replace the motherboard, it would have been much more work and also required replacing ram.
It's nice and all that Lego might be releasing an official design of rover, but models of the curiousity rover for 3d printing have been available for roughly a week now already and are begining to enter 2nd/3rd gen revisions...we just gave one away this morning that we printed last night for a childs birthday party.
Lego these days is about robotics and First Lego League Competitions....for models, we can print or create our own....same for legos pieces themselves.
If you can afford to buy your child the occasional lego model and various sets which are very expensive, then you can probably afford a 3d printer which opens up many more possibilities.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:27908
Type 2 generally means that the body has developed higher levels of resistance of insulin and that the resistance has over time caused the pancreas to work so hard that not enough insulin is being produced at the time of diagnoses that body blood glucose levels are no longer kept within healthy parameters which causes the body to begin to experience accelerated aging. Type 2 patients usually also have a pancreas that is no longer capable of producing close to the normal amount insulin (the system has essentially given up and can't rebuild). So, two problems that feed on each other in a negative feedback loop...and only one is fixed by lowering weight.
In lucky cases, where diabetes is caught early and the pancreas has not yet been irreversibly damaged...reducing weight on its own cause a resulting reduction in insulin resistance and effectively 'cure' type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately in most cases, and especially because diabetes is diagnosed in the USA via blood fasting glucose levels, those that are diagnoesed with t2 diabetes already have incurable damage to the pancreas. There is currently no known way to cure this...unless science/medicine can find a way to fix insulin production levels of the pancreas without constant stimulation from oral meds/etc (metformin is the most commonly prescribed). A better form of diagnoses is regular hba1c tests which may detect diabetes before the irreversible damage to the pancreas has happened. Also, not all increases to insulin resistance are a result of weight,....drinking excessive soda which has carmel flavoring which increases insulin resistance, not getting enough exercise on its own mean the body doesn't get lowered insulin resistance, and other things that might be associated with those that are overweight have a huge role that are completely seperate from the weight itself.
Yep, this is all about rising chinese/pakistan tensions with india.
Pakistan has signaled that it is breaking off attempts to work with the USA because a good portion of the pakistan population wants the western world to go away and the rest of the population is hoping that if pakistan doesn't cooperate americans will give up on afghanistan sooner w/o any negative impact which means that pakistani's can have a larger influence on afghan politics.
Meanwhile, the chinese have come in and offered to be pakistan's new best friend. Mostly because China wants to increase its influence in the region and the greatest local competitor to chinese influence is india, of which there have been several border wars/skirmishes in the not so distant past. Pakistan and china are logical allies now -- it's a double win, lessen american influence -- encircle and limit indian power.
China is rapidly bumping up its military and adding to its forces on the india border -- pakistan will be able to free up troops if afghanistan falls under its sway and therefore have more troops to put towards india. Naturally, india is alarmed and wants new weapons NOW...france can deliver quicker. That's all there is to it.
Both parties attract those who are power hungry to their elected ranks:
- Republicans unfortunately have a tendency to allow politicians who are being paid by big business who want to gut all regulatory oversight and put in place laws that protect them. These guys certainly are as you describe.
- Democrats have the equal and opposite problem - politicians who are eager to give away other peoples money for projects and programs that don't work, as long as it gets them elected and in the elite so they can become the new "ruling class". When challenged about the fact that they are bankrupting the country, they respond with fake data/arguments or simply imply that some magic fairy will pay for it all ("the rich"), etc.
I find both very bad, but I don't blame the parties per say for the problem as much as the american voter for letting them get away with it. I also still think most voters intend to put someone who follows the party ideals I stated above into office, they just don't research enough or vote party line rather than review each candidate individually.
That's one way to look at it....I see things a slightly different:
*Republicans believe that nothing should hold back an individual or group from achieving success and happiness provided that it is done in a way that is not that harmful to society or others - also, that ideally all individuals and families should be positive role models. Furthermore, republicans generally believe that each section of society has a proper role and size where the family is responsible for giving kids a good start in life and being the primary resource for handling emergencies and major events, that the individual is responsible for what he achieves and his health, that religion and churches should look after the moral health of society and also be the venue through which most general welfare and charitable activities be handled, that government be limited to providing basic infrastructure and a neutral safe ground for everyone to interact, and lastly that when decisions in government be made that it be at the level closest to those impacted (e.g. local control of schools rather than state/federal).
*Democrats believe the republican "traditional approach" has failed or otherwise lets too many people out in the cold. Their arguments are more from the emotional side (e.g. everyone has a right to good health, it is better that we all have the same standard of living than that some do too much better than others, that too many people are not capable of governing their own life and we should use government to ensure they are both cared for and that their actions be for the general good).
Both approaches have their pluses and minuses.....I see the sensible middle ground being that for society to succeed long term it must blend both, enough of the republican approach to have wealth, and enough of the democrat approach for everyone to feel they've had a fair chance at life and not rebel.
Politics is more intense now simply because the USA is at the start or middle of an economic decline and there are two approaches being discussed. Republicans want to do everything possible to recover growth and wealth (no matter how painful it will be). Democrats are more fatalistic and believe that we should be directing our attention towards managing the decline in such a way that no one group gets hurt too bad, and that if any group must be hurt -- it should be at the higher end. Unfortunately, these two approaches are somewhat the opposite of each other...
If it was on PBS, I'd be worried that it would be biased.....
I give up even trying to watch charlie rose on pbs these days....... whenever reporters are brought in to discuss current events, there are always 2 from the editorial wing of the new york times, and 3 from other left leaning news outlets and the conversation always goes around to complaining about tea partiers.
I used to watch frontline, newshour, and other shows on pbs and the BBC....haven't been able to for the last 10 years, especially as even the science shows are no longer willing to consider all sides of an argument, and the bias is as much in what issues are covered as in the content and who they consult as experts. Pretty much ever since gore lost the election, and the AP decided that that fair fact based reporting wasn't informing voters properly, the closest I've found to fair reporting is the wall street journal (assuming you skip the editorial pages) and focus just on the news.
Fox also isn't that bad in the sense that they actually are open about their biases.....CNN/etc not so much.
The black line has been nothing but problematic for me(2TB, SATA 3Gbps).
Purchased 2 of them, both failed, RMA on the first has been working reliably, had to RMA the 2nd 3 times and it kept failing...no point in RMA'ing any further. Yes, I switched cables, power, and controllers to ensure it was the drives fault. From what I've read, western digital is doing only a minimal job on repairing RMA'd drives and then just sending them back out as re-certified and truncating warranties on rma'd drives down from the 5yr original guarantee to just 90 days.
Strangely enough, not a single problem with the either the seagate enterprise constellation drives (2TB) or the western digital RE4 enterprise drives (also 2TB). Dozens of these in production, some for a year now, and smartmon shows no issues except that while the western digital firmware is not 100% compatible w/ some controllers, seagate is compatible but trades that off for slightly less performance.
Unfortunately, amazon caved into the demands of the large publishers and is now allowing publishers to set prices. Naturally, the publishers have started to test having ebook prices of popular new releases actually be $1-2 higher than the equivalent hardcover and after the release has been out awhile reduce the ebook price to be just the same as paperback. So, in effect we move from the situation a year ago where kindle readers were receiving a discount on books and publishers could complain that the future of publishing was in peril - we now have a situation where kindle readers are being pushed as an extra money maker - kindle readers are paying a premium for fast access to books above and beyond the cost of the kindle itself. Somewhat of an interesting situation where if a kindle owner has an amazon prime account, he is actually paying amazon extra not to kill a tree and burn additional energy to send him the physical copy.
Why does anyone care how much taxes companies pay? if a company is rich so what? The money is worthless until it is returned to the investors or employees, and then it is very highly taxed. Short of controlling the flow of money across national borders, I can't see why anyone should be looking at how much taxes the companies pay rather than how much taxes the individual investors and employees pay.
As another kindle user, yes, ebooks tend to be cheaper and it certainly saves $$ never to be paying full hardback pricing ever again. Honestly, I've stopped buying any physical books at all. Everything goes to Kindle, and unless I really want a particular book, I never pay more than $15 for one (non-technical books) and most of the time pricing is in the $6.99 - $9.99 range.
Honestly, the biggest problem I've had is that while most of the books that I want are available in kindle edition, not all are. Also, I've had some issues finding certain o'reilly titles in kindle version. I'm guessing they took awhile to ramp up kindle support, prefering readers to use safari.com or buy online from oreilly.com. Neither is really an option for me. I want the ability for Amazon to manage my library and to download/redownload my books to whatever kindle I am using (I also hate the idea of paying safari to rent access to books)...I can take small kindle to gym and read while on treadmill, and then use larger kindle at work for the same book (and I dont have to find where I left off, amazon syncs that for me along with any notes/bookmarks/etc). However, this only works if book was purchased from amazon.
I'm honestly fine with all the DRM/etc limitations of Kindle. I'll trade off any functionality loss for the lower purchase price. And, rather than having to search several bookcases at home for book I want later on, I can quickly search my kindle library for whatever I need.
* If you move your infrastructure in with them and later lose confidence in their abilities for whatever reason, how quickly and easily can you terminate and move out w/o all the hassle of pre-paying to end of term? This should be your biggest requirement. No matter how much do diligence you do on technical matters prior to moving in, things change...the datacenter provider could have financial problems, sudden facility problems, lose key critical staff, etc. Your contract needs to allow you the option to terminate when you reasonably lose confidence in their abilities w/o a billion hoops or outlandish costs.
* Power pricing and limitations on how much they are allowed to pass on additional costs from utilities during term of contract.