slave labor in the old American south proved more expensive than the employer/employee relationship in Great Britian at the time (pre-1850 or so) for just this reason
Yeah, I read a study several years ago that concluded that slavery would of ended in the US without the Civil War, that slavery was economically unsustainable. Without the Civil War, slavery would ended within a score of years, 20 or there abouts. And just for the same reasons you bring up, it's cheaper to pay employees a living wage than it is to own slaves. I wish I had a link to the study online.
You missed the point here a bit I think. Personal responsibility.
If you don't make enough money to support and take care of a child...DON'T HAVE CHILDREN. Make sure you have done what you need to do without the shackles of marriage or children to get to where you can afford to raise and take care of a family.
If you fsck up, and make bad life choices...well, that's tough my friend. You just have to work harder, or live with your decisions. It isn't up to the world to make your decisions for you, or make up for when you make poor ones.
It's not always a matter of personal responsibility, sometimes things happen that are out of your control. It happened to me, I was in college and one day after my class I was riding my bike when moving van hit me. I wasn't riding wrecklessly or where I shouldn't be riding, instead the driver of the van was compleatly at fault. Witnesses said he was swerving all over the road and it was only a matter of tyme before he hit someone. Months after I came out of a coma and was in therapy I was told that he was a diabetic and had a seizer while driving, however he had caused two accidents prior to mine and was admitted to the hospital twice for the sane reason. He even moved from one state to the state I lived in because the police there issued an arrest warrent with his name on it. Anyway, through no fault of mine, I am a survivior of a TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury. In a heartbeat, I went from being a Computer Engineering student to being disabled and not able to finish the degree. At least not without a lot of assistance and struggle.
Sometimes I even feel guilty when I set limit order sells on stocks that I only bought a few days ago because I know I'm just playing this system to vampire blood out of actual working people at that company.
Ah, do you Swing trade? A brother-in-law used to day trade. He and my sister were setting up an account for me to trade as well but then they missplaced everything. I'd do it myself only my income is disability and it's not much.
He was high up in the enlisted pecking order why would he trade that for a LT position. Besides as an ex-enlisted he probably would not get much respect from the officers anyway.
He wasn't high up on the pecking order, as an E5 he was mid tier, middle management. As for being looked down by other officers, my platoon's lt as well as some others were also OCS grads and I never saw them as being looked down on. But then again we didn't hangout together so they may of been looked down on, I don't know. As an officer though he would of been paid more, and then when he left the service he could of gotten a better position in civilian life as well as have a better retirement pension. I almost did, and wanted to, become an officer though not commissioned. My CO had put in a request for me to be sent to Warrant Officer Flight School to become a Warrant Officer flying helicopters. Unfortunately several months later I got order to go to Germany. When I asked my CO about it he said order to go overseas almost always override any other orders a person has. He said he'd check into it but he didn't hope out any hope, and he was right, he couldn't have the order changed. And I was so looking forward to learning to fly a helicopter, since I was a kid I wanted to get my pilot's license. Then again my dad retired from the air force and an uncle got his pilot's license and built his own plane.
People generally don't generally pay any taxes on money they donate to charities, so that million dollar bonus would still be a million dollars that could be split into theoretical donations for college kids. Sure, their employer may take that money out of the payment initially if it went to a person first, and a charity afterwards, but all that would be returned once a tax return was filed with the deductions.
It doesn't quite work that way when filing for US income tax, you don't get a dollar for dollar reduction on your taxes. Instead say you're tax bracket is %35, if you donate $1000 your tax would drop by $350 dollars, not the full $1,000 you donated. It may drop more, but only if because of the donation your tax bracket drops too, say from %35 to %30. In this case your income taxes be be lower than in the above example.
Relevant areas for complaint are in globalization practices (i.e. slave labor)
Are you talking about "sweat shops"? While people working in them get much less pay than what an American would make in the US, most of the workers make more than workers who weren't able to get a job in the shop. But because they have good steady jobs, provided the work conditions aren't hazzardous to health, they can afford more where they live. This then helps others in the area by creating more jobs.
If you really want to talk about how globalization hurts the world's poor, then what you really need to talk about is the industrialized world dumping cheap food on under or un-developed countries. Take Mexico, do you want to stop the "illegal aliens or immigrants"? Then stop dumping corn in Mexico to sale for less than Mexican farmers can grow it. The US government gives US agribusinesses $Billions which allows these businesses to dump food in Mexico. And because of NAFTA there's nothing Mexicans can do about it. And it's not just the US that does this, the EU and Japan subsidizes their agriculture industries more than the US does. That is why the WTO meetings in Geneva fell apart this past summer. India along with other countries tried to stop the EU, Japan, and the US from dumping food in their countries.
What you don't understand is that the military was designed to harvest people like you who had no other choice. When I was in the military the vast majority of the people I "served" with were there either to get money for education, to get out of their rinky dink town, or because they just could not cut it in the real world.
I didn't see it that way when I was in the army, then again maybe it was because of my mos which was 11b, small arms speciallist or infantry. I'd say less than a quarter of those in my units were saving for college though some like me were. Some others were lifers, some just burning tyme, and some who didn't have an idea about their future. I recall one lifer though, a sergeant in my unit, who took college classes when he could. Finally after 8 years he got his BA, that day was the happiest I ever saw him. What I found kind of supprizing was that he wanted to stay enlisted in the army, he didn't even want to go the OCS, Officer Cadet School to get his commission as an officer which since he had his degree he could have done.
Can be done. Not always easy. Not always fun. But if you are physically able (a substantial if) and havn't committed any crimes (totally within your power to control), there is an almost guaranteed path of upward mobility for those who choose to work hard.
Good thing you added "almost" to the front of the statement on the subject line, though I'd change "guaranteed" to "possible". I came from a lower income, not lower middle income but lower income, background and I went into the army to save money so I could afford to go to college. After getting my AA degree, I started at a community college because it's cheaper and students don't have to fight for tyme with a professer trying to get a grant or doing research, after having left campus after my class I was hit by a moving van while riding my bike because of which I now have a permanent disability. However it's not a directly a physical disability, instead I am a survivor of a TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury. Because of my injury even if I had wanted to continue with the major I had, which was Computer Engineering, I would of had to retake almost all of the classes needed for the major. And then it's possible I could never do the work as my memory was damaged and it can be difficult if not impossible for me to remember simple things like how to solve a physics 101 problem, and I was taking physics as a minor. SO while I worked hard to get where I was headed, a few microseconds changed it all for me.
What's the ethnic and cultural diversity within each of these countries? I know Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Norway, and Netherlands are relatively homogenous.
New Zealanders of European descent pretty much dominate New Zealand but aboriginals, the Maori are reclaiming their culture. A good example of this is the movie Whale Rider, made in 2002. Keisha Castle-Hughes, the star of the movie, went to NY to receive an award for her part. Japan isn't so homogenous as many think. Many of those "Japanese" aren't aboriginal to the islands of Japan. The aboriginals are the Ainu. In the Scandinavian, northern European, countries of the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, they have experienced the immigration of Muslims from different Middle Eastern countries. And Switzerland isn't homogenous either. Three, now four, languages are frequently used. In the north a Germanic language is used, to the west French is used, and to the south Italian is found. And then there's English. Overall Europe isn't as homogenous as many Americans in the US think.
Oh, and the government will agree to only hold the wind power industry responsable for the first 10 billion dollars or so of damages
I know of no government guarranty to wind power such as this, can you provide a link?
You don't store electricity if you don't have to, because the storage systems are expensive.
Many people have battery banks to store the energy their solar, wind, or hybrid systems generate. Magazines like Home Power show just how people are doing it. Fact is is more and more people are going Off the Grid. And because they are off the grid they have to store energy in battery banks. It may seem expensive to setup such a system but the payback period can be as little as a few years, and that doesn't take in inflation, the cost of electricity going up. Once the system's cost has been recovered what's left is "free energy". Even the costs of maintance is less than the cost of electricity used if bought from the power company.
Therefore you need backup power capability, which substantially increases the costs of the 'green' power, because you essentially have to build double the capacity. Oh, and most standbys are either expensive NG or dirty coal.
This is basically true only on the grid, but off the grid is another matter.
Linux drives are a software issue, not a hardware issue. See this doc. I have a standard dual layer drive on my linux box and it works fine reading dual layer disks or writing single layer disks, I just can't write dual layer disks.
I imagine it's the same with Lightscribe which allows you to print on the disk using the dvd drive.
But for those storage needs a DL DVD isn't enough either, you need a lot of them either way. And given that the price per gigabyte is more than twice for DL DVD, it's an easy decision.
True, dl dvds will only cut the number of disks needed in half but it still reduces the number a lot.
BTW, I guess many of those files will not change any more, so if you archive them once (or maybe twice, to be sure), you can skip them in future backups (except if your media fails - with two backups, you then can just make a fresh copy of the non-failed media).
That's what I've been thinking of doing, burning the photos and other files I won't be using much if at all but still want to keep onto disk then delete them from my hdd. Currently when I have film developed I also have the photos burned on cds. But when I get back into developing film myself, years ago I used to develop my own and want to start doing it again, I'd like to get a film scanner and burn them to disk. In another related topic I'd like to design a database for my photos, in part to make it easier to find a specific photo. I'm wondering what db to use though, MySQL, Postgress, or Firebird. I've never used any of them but I heard MySQL isn't a true relational db, that it takes a workaround to impliment a relational or associative table.
the demise of popular electronics and the slate of similar magazines, in which you had both semi-interesting one or two element circuits to learn off of as welll as more advanced functional items is badly missed.
There are still some good electronics magazines published. There's Everyday Practical Electronics for instance. Steve Ciarcia's Ciruit Cellar, I used to love to read his "Circuit Cellar" column in the print edition of "Byte" magazine, is good though works mainly with microcontrollers. Ooh I see you mention both "Byte" and "Ciruit Cellar" later. Then there's Make zine, which is about hacking most anything, an example is one issue on hacking plants. One article was on how to setup a mycology lab and grow mushrooms. So though it's not just electronics they do have some electronics projects.
as is heathkit
Heathkit is still around but I don't know how good they are now.
I tinkered with electronics & "Radio-Shack" projects back in the late 1970s & early '80s and I still like to go into the local electronics stores to look around (note: NOT Radio Shack anymore).
Yeap, way back when RadShack had some good learning projects, but now they have hardly anything. At least the ones around here as I've looked for them. Heathkit had some good things too but I don't know how well they are now.
And it is not like fossil fuels don't get big subsidies either in the U.S.... or what do you think that 100 billion dollar adventure in Iraq was about? Do you think the cost of the future consequences of global warming are being calculated into the bill for your coal generated electricity?
Ooh I know the petroleum industry gets it's own subsidies. If other sectors of the energy industry such as solar, geothermal, and wind got just as much in subsidies I wouldn't mind so much. But by giving the nuclear power and petro industries as much in subsidies as they get they have an unfair advantage over other energy sources. Personally I think that if the government is going the subsidize any energy sector then it needs to sponser a Manhatten or Apollo Project sized program for alternative, clean and renewable, energy sources. This should give you the idea I don't particularly support the fossil fuel industries. Actually, I've been designing the home I eventually want to build and I'm designing it to be energy selfsufficient. I am using passive solar designs to reduce heating and cooling needs, maximizing daylighting to reduce the need to use lights during the day, and use energy efficient lights and appliances. For more than 15 years now, I've only used, er bought when a light bulb burns out, CFL bulbs which use 1/4 of the energy regular incandescent lights do. If led lights were better for area lighting instead of just spot lighting, I use them, they only use a tenth of the energy.
seems to me IMHO that the judge should have whacked his gavel and dismissed with prejudice (meaning never able to file again) three and a half years ago.
SCO would of been able to go to the appeals court and asked to have the case reinstated, then if it was it would look bad for the judge. Though it's a real hassle, with both judges letting SCO run with this case they are giving SCO a lot of rope to hang themself with.
This is ridiculous. I don't know why some company doesn't just put up a few Million dollars (or 10s of millions) to buy SCO and put all these stupid legal battles behind us. They'll never win any of them, but they'll continue to be a nuisance. Ugghhh
What SCO is doing is ridiculous. It would also be ridiculous for someone who works with or has a Linux distro to buy them out. All it would do is show that you can make a lot of money if you release enough hot air. Someone buying out SCO would invite others to make claims on Linux, and say it violates their patents. Instead these lawsuits need to go all the way through with SCO loosing big. When that happens others will have second thoughts about going after someone who contributes to Linux.
*HOWEVER*, France does have a very viable nuclear power industry. Nuclear power, in France, is cheaper than coal power is in the United States. Nuclear power in France is cheap, safe, and provides about 70% of the France's electricity.
Yes but how much does France's nuclear power industry get in subsidies?
It's a little more convenient, but most of the time 4.7 GB is enough space for your data.
I have more than 160GB on my hdds. If I go through all of my files and delete those I think I may not need anymore I may be able to reduce my backup needs to 100GB, so I'd still need 20 single layer dvds to backup everything. And when I finally get a dslr camera my storage needs will be a lot higher. Now I realize not many people have these storage requirements, but there are some who do.
Me too. But DVD-Rs were also supposed to be multi-layer and yet the only ones available are the single layer, so why will the HD-DVD market be different in that only commercial presses will be the only ones to make use of multiple layers for more storage?
You can get double or dual layer dvd drives now. Unfortunately I've only been able to find any for Windows and Macs but none for Linux, which I have been looking for.
Indeed, my at home archival solution of 4.3 GB DVD-Rs is becoming painful just for my data.
That's why I've been looking for one, for backup and archiving purposes. I have two hdds in the PC I'm using now, one 40GB and the other 120GB for a total of 160GB. Both of these were full when I started transferring my file to a new PC. My new Linux box has two hdds also, one 40GB and the other 750GB. It would take up more than 15 disks to backp the whole 750 GB drive using single layer disks.
Since Pricewatch has 500GB harddrives listed at around $150 and external firewire for a little more than that - it's obvious harddrives will soon overtake regular DVDs for the economically minded and already have for the ones who prize convenience.
I've thought about external hdds, usb2 or firewire, for backup but I'm wondering how long they'll last for. Also if you have a comprehensive backup plan, you'll need one hdd or set of disks on site and a second one stored offsite.
The chances of an atom of waste buried in moving groundwater ending up in the human food supply are less than 1 in a trillion.
Studies have shown water does travel away from Yucca hundreds of miles.
We intend to bury it in Yucca mountain (not moving groundwater) which is an extremely stable geological formation which hasn't moved for millions of years and almost certainly won't move for a long time.
The area around Yucca is seismically active, and has experienced earthquakes. It is NOT geologically stable. In the 1970s a government building was damaged during an earthquake there, and in 2002 another earthquake happened not far from there.
a few of us are sitting here on slashdot, with the answers to islamofascism and environmental destruction, two of the biggest problems in the world, and the answer is safe (yes, i said SAFE), cheap (yes i said CHEAP), plentiful (yes i said PLENTIFUL), secure (yes i said SECURE) and low polluting (yes, i said LOW POLLUTING) nuclear
Nuclear is only cheap because the government subsidizes the industry and passed laws protecting the industry. If the nuclear power industry had to operate in a freemarket, ie buy their own insurance and pay for the storage of their waste it wouldn't be profitable. However because the US shields power plants from lawsuits and pays for storage it is profitable. But heck, many things would be profitable if the government were made to make laws favoring them and pick up the tab of cleanup as well as insurance.
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slave labor in the old American south proved more expensive than the employer/employee relationship in Great Britian at the time (pre-1850 or so) for just this reason
Yeah, I read a study several years ago that concluded that slavery would of ended in the US without the Civil War, that slavery was economically unsustainable. Without the Civil War, slavery would ended within a score of years, 20 or there abouts. And just for the same reasons you bring up, it's cheaper to pay employees a living wage than it is to own slaves. I wish I had a link to the study online.
FalconYou missed the point here a bit I think. Personal responsibility.
If you don't make enough money to support and take care of a child...DON'T HAVE CHILDREN. Make sure you have done what you need to do without the shackles of marriage or children to get to where you can afford to raise and take care of a family.
If you fsck up, and make bad life choices...well, that's tough my friend. You just have to work harder, or live with your decisions. It isn't up to the world to make your decisions for you, or make up for when you make poor ones.
It's not always a matter of personal responsibility, sometimes things happen that are out of your control. It happened to me, I was in college and one day after my class I was riding my bike when moving van hit me. I wasn't riding wrecklessly or where I shouldn't be riding, instead the driver of the van was compleatly at fault. Witnesses said he was swerving all over the road and it was only a matter of tyme before he hit someone. Months after I came out of a coma and was in therapy I was told that he was a diabetic and had a seizer while driving, however he had caused two accidents prior to mine and was admitted to the hospital twice for the sane reason. He even moved from one state to the state I lived in because the police there issued an arrest warrent with his name on it. Anyway, through no fault of mine, I am a survivior of a TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury. In a heartbeat, I went from being a Computer Engineering student to being disabled and not able to finish the degree. At least not without a lot of assistance and struggle.
FalconSometimes I even feel guilty when I set limit order sells on stocks that I only bought a few days ago because I know I'm just playing this system to vampire blood out of actual working people at that company.
Ah, do you Swing trade? A brother-in-law used to day trade. He and my sister were setting up an account for me to trade as well but then they missplaced everything. I'd do it myself only my income is disability and it's not much.
FalconHe was high up in the enlisted pecking order why would he trade that for a LT position. Besides as an ex-enlisted he probably would not get much respect from the officers anyway.
He wasn't high up on the pecking order, as an E5 he was mid tier, middle management. As for being looked down by other officers, my platoon's lt as well as some others were also OCS grads and I never saw them as being looked down on. But then again we didn't hangout together so they may of been looked down on, I don't know. As an officer though he would of been paid more, and then when he left the service he could of gotten a better position in civilian life as well as have a better retirement pension. I almost did, and wanted to, become an officer though not commissioned. My CO had put in a request for me to be sent to Warrant Officer Flight School to become a Warrant Officer flying helicopters. Unfortunately several months later I got order to go to Germany. When I asked my CO about it he said order to go overseas almost always override any other orders a person has. He said he'd check into it but he didn't hope out any hope, and he was right, he couldn't have the order changed. And I was so looking forward to learning to fly a helicopter, since I was a kid I wanted to get my pilot's license. Then again my dad retired from the air force and an uncle got his pilot's license and built his own plane.
FalconPeople generally don't generally pay any taxes on money they donate to charities, so that million dollar bonus would still be a million dollars that could be split into theoretical donations for college kids. Sure, their employer may take that money out of the payment initially if it went to a person first, and a charity afterwards, but all that would be returned once a tax return was filed with the deductions.
It doesn't quite work that way when filing for US income tax, you don't get a dollar for dollar reduction on your taxes. Instead say you're tax bracket is %35, if you donate $1000 your tax would drop by $350 dollars, not the full $1,000 you donated. It may drop more, but only if because of the donation your tax bracket drops too, say from %35 to %30. In this case your income taxes be be lower than in the above example.
FalconRelevant areas for complaint are in globalization practices (i.e. slave labor)
Are you talking about "sweat shops"? While people working in them get much less pay than what an American would make in the US, most of the workers make more than workers who weren't able to get a job in the shop. But because they have good steady jobs, provided the work conditions aren't hazzardous to health, they can afford more where they live. This then helps others in the area by creating more jobs.
If you really want to talk about how globalization hurts the world's poor, then what you really need to talk about is the industrialized world dumping cheap food on under or un-developed countries. Take Mexico, do you want to stop the "illegal aliens or immigrants"? Then stop dumping corn in Mexico to sale for less than Mexican farmers can grow it. The US government gives US agribusinesses $Billions which allows these businesses to dump food in Mexico. And because of NAFTA there's nothing Mexicans can do about it. And it's not just the US that does this, the EU and Japan subsidizes their agriculture industries more than the US does. That is why the WTO meetings in Geneva fell apart this past summer. India along with other countries tried to stop the EU, Japan, and the US from dumping food in their countries.
FalconWhat you don't understand is that the military was designed to harvest people like you who had no other choice. When I was in the military the vast majority of the people I "served" with were there either to get money for education, to get out of their rinky dink town, or because they just could not cut it in the real world.
I didn't see it that way when I was in the army, then again maybe it was because of my mos which was 11b, small arms speciallist or infantry. I'd say less than a quarter of those in my units were saving for college though some like me were. Some others were lifers, some just burning tyme, and some who didn't have an idea about their future. I recall one lifer though, a sergeant in my unit, who took college classes when he could. Finally after 8 years he got his BA, that day was the happiest I ever saw him. What I found kind of supprizing was that he wanted to stay enlisted in the army, he didn't even want to go the OCS, Officer Cadet School to get his commission as an officer which since he had his degree he could have done.
FalconCan be done. Not always easy. Not always fun. But if you are physically able (a substantial if) and havn't committed any crimes (totally within your power to control), there is an almost guaranteed path of upward mobility for those who choose to work hard.
Good thing you added "almost" to the front of the statement on the subject line, though I'd change "guaranteed" to "possible". I came from a lower income, not lower middle income but lower income, background and I went into the army to save money so I could afford to go to college. After getting my AA degree, I started at a community college because it's cheaper and students don't have to fight for tyme with a professer trying to get a grant or doing research, after having left campus after my class I was hit by a moving van while riding my bike because of which I now have a permanent disability. However it's not a directly a physical disability, instead I am a survivor of a TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury. Because of my injury even if I had wanted to continue with the major I had, which was Computer Engineering, I would of had to retake almost all of the classes needed for the major. And then it's possible I could never do the work as my memory was damaged and it can be difficult if not impossible for me to remember simple things like how to solve a physics 101 problem, and I was taking physics as a minor. SO while I worked hard to get where I was headed, a few microseconds changed it all for me.
Falcon...New Zealand...
What's the ethnic and cultural diversity within each of these countries? I know Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Norway, and Netherlands are relatively homogenous.
New Zealanders of European descent pretty much dominate New Zealand but aboriginals, the Maori are reclaiming their culture. A good example of this is the movie Whale Rider , made in 2002. Keisha Castle-Hughes, the star of the movie, went to NY to receive an award for her part. Japan isn't so homogenous as many think. Many of those "Japanese" aren't aboriginal to the islands of Japan. The aboriginals are the Ainu. In the Scandinavian, northern European, countries of the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, they have experienced the immigration of Muslims from different Middle Eastern countries. And Switzerland isn't homogenous either. Three, now four, languages are frequently used. In the north a Germanic language is used, to the west French is used, and to the south Italian is found. And then there's English. Overall Europe isn't as homogenous as many Americans in the US think.
FalconOh, and the government will agree to only hold the wind power industry responsable for the first 10 billion dollars or so of damages
I know of no government guarranty to wind power such as this, can you provide a link?
You don't store electricity if you don't have to, because the storage systems are expensive.
Many people have battery banks to store the energy their solar, wind, or hybrid systems generate. Magazines like Home Power show just how people are doing it. Fact is is more and more people are going Off the Grid. And because they are off the grid they have to store energy in battery banks. It may seem expensive to setup such a system but the payback period can be as little as a few years, and that doesn't take in inflation, the cost of electricity going up. Once the system's cost has been recovered what's left is "free energy". Even the costs of maintance is less than the cost of electricity used if bought from the power company.
Therefore you need backup power capability, which substantially increases the costs of the 'green' power, because you essentially have to build double the capacity. Oh, and most standbys are either expensive NG or dirty coal.
This is basically true only on the grid, but off the grid is another matter.
FalconLinux drives are a software issue, not a hardware issue. See this doc. I have a standard dual layer drive on my linux box and it works fine reading dual layer disks or writing single layer disks, I just can't write dual layer disks.
I imagine it's the same with Lightscribe which allows you to print on the disk using the dvd drive.
FalconSlightly related to this: How the terabyte drive could end the DVD wars
Two external drives, one stored offsite, like this would be a big help.
FalconBut for those storage needs a DL DVD isn't enough either, you need a lot of them either way. And given that the price per gigabyte is more than twice for DL DVD, it's an easy decision.
True, dl dvds will only cut the number of disks needed in half but it still reduces the number a lot.
BTW, I guess many of those files will not change any more, so if you archive them once (or maybe twice, to be sure), you can skip them in future backups (except if your media fails - with two backups, you then can just make a fresh copy of the non-failed media).
That's what I've been thinking of doing, burning the photos and other files I won't be using much if at all but still want to keep onto disk then delete them from my hdd. Currently when I have film developed I also have the photos burned on cds. But when I get back into developing film myself, years ago I used to develop my own and want to start doing it again, I'd like to get a film scanner and burn them to disk. In another related topic I'd like to design a database for my photos, in part to make it easier to find a specific photo. I'm wondering what db to use though, MySQL, Postgress, or Firebird. I've never used any of them but I heard MySQL isn't a true relational db, that it takes a workaround to impliment a relational or associative table.
Falconthe demise of popular electronics and the slate of similar magazines, in which you had both semi-interesting one or two element circuits to learn off of as welll as more advanced functional items is badly missed.
There are still some good electronics magazines published. There's Everyday Practical Electronics for instance. Steve Ciarcia's Ciruit Cellar , I used to love to read his "Circuit Cellar" column in the print edition of "Byte" magazine, is good though works mainly with microcontrollers. Ooh I see you mention both "Byte" and "Ciruit Cellar" later. Then there's Make zine, which is about hacking most anything, an example is one issue on hacking plants. One article was on how to setup a mycology lab and grow mushrooms. So though it's not just electronics they do have some electronics projects.
as is heathkit
Heathkit is still around but I don't know how good they are now.
FalconI tinkered with electronics & "Radio-Shack" projects back in the late 1970s & early '80s and I still like to go into the local electronics stores to look around (note: NOT Radio Shack anymore).
Yeap, way back when RadShack had some good learning projects, but now they have hardly anything. At least the ones around here as I've looked for them. Heathkit had some good things too but I don't know how well they are now.
FalconAnd it is not like fossil fuels don't get big subsidies either in the U.S. ... or what do you think that 100 billion dollar adventure in Iraq was about? Do you think the cost of the future consequences of global warming are being calculated into the bill for your coal generated electricity?
Ooh I know the petroleum industry gets it's own subsidies. If other sectors of the energy industry such as solar, geothermal, and wind got just as much in subsidies I wouldn't mind so much. But by giving the nuclear power and petro industries as much in subsidies as they get they have an unfair advantage over other energy sources. Personally I think that if the government is going the subsidize any energy sector then it needs to sponser a Manhatten or Apollo Project sized program for alternative, clean and renewable, energy sources. This should give you the idea I don't particularly support the fossil fuel industries. Actually, I've been designing the home I eventually want to build and I'm designing it to be energy selfsufficient. I am using passive solar designs to reduce heating and cooling needs, maximizing daylighting to reduce the need to use lights during the day, and use energy efficient lights and appliances. For more than 15 years now, I've only used, er bought when a light bulb burns out, CFL bulbs which use 1/4 of the energy regular incandescent lights do. If led lights were better for area lighting instead of just spot lighting, I use them, they only use a tenth of the energy.
Falconseems to me IMHO that the judge should have whacked his gavel and dismissed with prejudice (meaning never able to file again) three and a half years ago.
SCO would of been able to go to the appeals court and asked to have the case reinstated, then if it was it would look bad for the judge. Though it's a real hassle, with both judges letting SCO run with this case they are giving SCO a lot of rope to hang themself with.
FalconThis is ridiculous. I don't know why some company doesn't just put up a few Million dollars (or 10s of millions) to buy SCO and put all these stupid legal battles behind us. They'll never win any of them, but they'll continue to be a nuisance. Ugghhh
What SCO is doing is ridiculous. It would also be ridiculous for someone who works with or has a Linux distro to buy them out. All it would do is show that you can make a lot of money if you release enough hot air. Someone buying out SCO would invite others to make claims on Linux, and say it violates their patents. Instead these lawsuits need to go all the way through with SCO loosing big. When that happens others will have second thoughts about going after someone who contributes to Linux.
Falcon*HOWEVER*, France does have a very viable nuclear power industry. Nuclear power, in France, is cheaper than coal power is in the United States. Nuclear power in France is cheap, safe, and provides about 70% of the France's electricity.
Yes but how much does France's nuclear power industry get in subsidies?
FalconIt's a little more convenient, but most of the time 4.7 GB is enough space for your data.
I have more than 160GB on my hdds. If I go through all of my files and delete those I think I may not need anymore I may be able to reduce my backup needs to 100GB, so I'd still need 20 single layer dvds to backup everything. And when I finally get a dslr camera my storage needs will be a lot higher. Now I realize not many people have these storage requirements, but there are some who do.
FalconMe too. But DVD-Rs were also supposed to be multi-layer and yet the only ones available are the single layer, so why will the HD-DVD market be different in that only commercial presses will be the only ones to make use of multiple layers for more storage?
You can get double or dual layer dvd drives now. Unfortunately I've only been able to find any for Windows and Macs but none for Linux, which I have been looking for.
Indeed, my at home archival solution of 4.3 GB DVD-Rs is becoming painful just for my data.
That's why I've been looking for one, for backup and archiving purposes. I have two hdds in the PC I'm using now, one 40GB and the other 120GB for a total of 160GB. Both of these were full when I started transferring my file to a new PC. My new Linux box has two hdds also, one 40GB and the other 750GB. It would take up more than 15 disks to backp the whole 750 GB drive using single layer disks.
Since Pricewatch has 500GB harddrives listed at around $150 and external firewire for a little more than that - it's obvious harddrives will soon overtake regular DVDs for the economically minded and already have for the ones who prize convenience.
I've thought about external hdds, usb2 or firewire, for backup but I'm wondering how long they'll last for. Also if you have a comprehensive backup plan, you'll need one hdd or set of disks on site and a second one stored offsite.
Falcon170 gigs per disk? Make it writeable/cheap and I'm on that train/boat/whatever.
Make them rewritable and cost not much more than wr disks are now and I'll board. Ooh and have a driver for Linux.
FalconThe chances of an atom of waste buried in moving groundwater ending up in the human food supply are less than 1 in a trillion.
Studies have shown water does travel away from Yucca hundreds of miles.
We intend to bury it in Yucca mountain (not moving groundwater) which is an extremely stable geological formation which hasn't moved for millions of years and almost certainly won't move for a long time.
The area around Yucca is seismically active, and has experienced earthquakes. It is NOT geologically stable. In the 1970s a government building was damaged during an earthquake there, and in 2002 another earthquake happened not far from there.
FalconAnyways, I'll stop thinking of unobtainium now
While I have "The Core", they just burned through the crystal, playing I see this.
Falcona few of us are sitting here on slashdot, with the answers to islamofascism and environmental destruction, two of the biggest problems in the world, and the answer is safe (yes, i said SAFE), cheap (yes i said CHEAP), plentiful (yes i said PLENTIFUL), secure (yes i said SECURE) and low polluting (yes, i said LOW POLLUTING) nuclear
Nuclear is only cheap because the government subsidizes the industry and passed laws protecting the industry. If the nuclear power industry had to operate in a freemarket, ie buy their own insurance and pay for the storage of their waste it wouldn't be profitable. However because the US shields power plants from lawsuits and pays for storage it is profitable. But heck, many things would be profitable if the government were made to make laws favoring them and pick up the tab of cleanup as well as insurance.
Falcon