I can understand something like DirecTV, where you're explicitly paying for certain content and as such, it constitutes a "license". What baffles me is MNF is a *broadcast* thing, meaning anybody with a crappy TV set and antenna can pick it up. It's not like in the US, buying a TV set in any way contributes to the content providers. For fuck's sake, if you don't want people to watch it, don't broadcast it. Anything blasted over the public airwaves should be available for public viewing, be that a TV in my bedroom or in the corner of my favorite bar.
IMHO, the NFL and MLB have gotten *way* too disconnected from the fact that it's fans that make the money. I like both sports, but I now refuse to watch either NFL or major league baseball games - live or televised. I'd rather go support my local minor league baseball team and the NHL, who seems very reasonable about the whole thing.
Well said - dated just about every other coloration and ethnicity, but never your stereotype "blonde bombshell". Not that I haven't had the chance, but I'm just not physically attracted to them, and I'm pretty much your stereotypic white male of western European decent (Welsh, Scottish, and German, mainly).
So it's a slight tangent from the main topic, but I got yet another letter today from my bank, letting me know that my bank card number was amongst those harvested from a compromised card processor, and that my card number would be cancelled and reissued within a few days.
My favorite part? "For privacy reasons, the name of the processor cannot be revealed." I think it should be a fucking law that they have to name the guilty party in these sorts of things, so that we (everyone whose number was compromised) can sue their asses into oblivion. It's a significant inconvenience to change my card number everywhere when I'm home, and it's a *REAL* problem when I'm on a two week trip in Alaska and suddenly, without warning, my card doesn't work and I have only the cash left in my pocket (plus my real credit card, but some places in the far north only take cash...) This is the third time in as many years that they've done this to me.
How I'd love to be able to break out legal whoopass on those stupid card processors that are retarded enough to have their systems compromised, and recover damages for both the hours it takes me to change over all of my auto-bill stuff, as well as some punitive damages for them being dumbfucks.
Actually, I agree a lot with the grandparent poster - I, too, drive an old Honda (1995 del Sol in my case - with something like 245,000 on it) most of the time, and I'd put it right up against one of these Smart buggers any day. It's not a light car for a small 2-seater - about 2500 pounds - but they can make up to about 40mpg, do remarkably well in collisions and have dual airbags (for those that would argue the lack of modern safety features). I drive it all over the place - it's been to Alaska, Mexico, both coasts, etc. It's been my faithful travel companion for years. Best part is that I paid only about $4000 for it, 150,000 miles ago.
I've seen pictures of one that got hit in the rear by a full-sized Chevy truck, with something like a 50mph speed difference at the point of collision. The Honda is totaled, but I know the driver, and he immediately got out after the wreck and started cussing out the other driver.
I agree. Professional programmer here as well, and IDEs significantly improve my productivity and accuracy. IDEs aren't a new Windows thing - I still remember the Turbo C environment for DOS. Having an integrated, interactive debugger is incredibly useful...
Completely open to attack? Um, I don't think so. The key to not getting viruses, trojans, and other uglies on Windows is - *drumroll* - don't be a dumbfuck. Let's cover the basics - hardware NAT device between you and the tubes, Firefox, set a strong admin password, don't run random attachments, run Windows Update regularly, get a decent virus scanner and keep it updated, and preferably use anything but Outlook for email. I've run this way for years and never, never, never had any sort of security problems. Ever. My dad (definitely not a computer guy) is basically set up the same way, and again, no problems. With some very simple changes, it's possible for Win2k/WinXP to be "secure enough" as an end user computer.
Agreed - an Asterisk-based PBX is *not* overkill if you're already putting in a central home control server of some sort, particularly if you have anybody else living with you (spouse, kids, etc.) I have a three story house (basement, 1st, 2nd floors), and will often call my wife in her office (2nd floor) on the from the basement if I just have a quick question. Plus, it lets you do fun things like have an extension that routes through to your cell, etc., if you have enough incoming and outgoing circuits to do it.
Mine is tied in via a Sipura 3000 - it works, but there is a bit of echo sometimes. A word of advice - if you're not going VoIP all the way back to the telco, put a good old hard-wired phone on the incoming POTS line, ahead of all your fancy gear. In the event that your PBX bombs out, or power is out for an extended period, this can be invaluable.
Phishing, maybe if enough real organizations support it - spam, no fix here, folks. The only thing DKIM prevents is domain spoofing. So spammers have to have a real domain and sign their mail - that's so incredibly hard to do that I don't think any spammer wil... er, wait, a quick check of my spam box shows an unbelievable number are signed correctly.
On the other hand, if spammers are authenticating with a real domain, then filtering based on RBLs just got easier...
Also, exim guys - we could really use MTA-level support for DKIM on outgoing mail...
Well said... There's nothing like good ol' ANSI C when it comes to building a cross-platform core business component library. (That said, I do write in C++, PHP, Python, Forth, and several flavors of assembly as well...)
I guarantee you, for embedded development and drivers, C and ASM aren't going anywhere, possibly extended with a few C++ features.
I'm thrilled to hear this - MS is more than large enough to squash this moron for good. It's a rare day I root for Microsoft, but by all means Bill, break out them lawyers and use 'em!
My new DC7700 at work isn't a standard ATX power supply, and has a crippled BIOS that locks out the VT-x virtualization instructions. Seriously, I thought the same about Dell-vs-HP as you did before this experience. Now I realize that HP is following them down the road to "value add" hell.
Not really - mark me down in the luddite curmudgeon category as well. Personally I still miss my *mobile* phone - you know, the kind with a full-sized handset and a radio box mounted under your seat in the car. Sure, it wasn't terribly portable, but being analog and equipped with something like a 3W radio, that sucker could make and receive calls in places today's phones can only dream of... Plus, being analog, you could actually *understand* the person on the other end.
Hrm, not sure to write you off as a troll or respond, but ah, what the hell, I'll respond. Like many of us, I'm not anti-copyright. I firmly support the rights of an artist or inventor to control their work for a limited time in order to profit from it. (For reference, I'm both. I hold two patents, and I'm a published semi-professional photographer in my spare time.) The problem is that copyright was originally a deal struck between the general populous and the creative folk - the deal being that the creators get limited exclusivity in exchange for the eventuality that their creation will fall into public domain. This is the foundation of the US Constitution's core intellectual property provision: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
The problem is that the deal has become lop-sided. There's no way that an author's great grandchildren holding the rights to his writings up to 70 years after he died promotes the progress of science or the useful arts. That's just called greed. The author doesn't create more if he knows his distant descendants will still be extorting money for almost a century after he kicks off.
Arguably, the public domain is also vitally important to progress. Think about all the inventions that would have been lost or the massive inflation of prices (due to royalties) if patents were essentially perpetual as well. Think about historians in 100 years, trying to figure out if they can reprint a photo out of fear that someone, somewhere will show up and demand royalties because the photo was taken by their great-great-grandfather. It's already a nightmare figuring out reproduction rights.
The system is broken, and stronger penalties won't fix it. Existing punishments are adequate if enforced against the real problem - large scale commercial piracy. Sane copyright terms, in conjunction with media companies not treating customers like felons, would be a good start.
I agree - my first thought when I saw this was "well, break out the soldering iron or the wire clippers". I have this obnoxious USB 2.0 hub I bought off eBay. It really works quite well, but it has about a zillion multicolored LEDs that light up and blink and mean absolutely zilch (seriously, nothing to do with port status). So I just desoldered them all and reused some of the cooler ones in other projects. Plus, it keeps my office from emitting an eerie glow that keeps me up at night...
So I suppose whatever OS you're using only has one thread/process running at a time? I've never understood the argument that multi-core doesn't benefit the desktop user. As I look at my machine right now, I have two development environments going (one actually in debug), four browser windows, an email client, an IM client, various background junk (virus scanner, 802.1x client for the wireless), and of course the OS itself - XP. None of those needs a more powerful proc, but it's nice when they're all grabbing for CPU time that I have two cores for them to run on.
At home I'm often converting images from RAW in the background and doing postprocessing on them in the foreground. RAW->JPEG conversion is CPU intensive, and it's nice that it doesn't bring my system to its knees while doing it. I can continue about my work, while the converter is maxing out one of the cores in the background.
I've had dual procs since 1996, and would never, ever, ever go back. It's so nice to not have everything stall when a background job starts hogging the CPU.
We can feel empathy for a machine that's doing us a favor -- but in reality has no feelings -- while simultaneously dehumazing whole groups of people who only differ from ourselves culturally and/or geographically. Um, that's because I like my car more than I like most of humanity.
I used to have the same problem, so I eventually installed a relay in the incoming phone line. Based on a timer, the relay would open the circuit between the hours of 10pm and 7am, disconnecting the internal phones from the telco. Thus, no annoying rings in the middle of the night to wake me up. The rest of the time (which is any time I'd call out or anybody reasonable would call in), everything worked normally.
I figured no harm done, as in a real emergency, my friends, family, and wife would call my cell.
Agreed, you assume conservative=religious nut. I absolutely abhor the religious right, but I tend to take a very conservative view of government - it should be small, efficient, incredibly transparent to the citizenry, and should do its dead level best to not interfere in the lives of normal citizens. Anything beyond that should be viewed with a very skeptical eye by the citizenry. I view that as a means to an end - government should not hinder personal liberty unless the exercise of a particular freedom directly prevents another person from exercising theirs. Call me wacky like that.
This current administration has been the ultimate in anti-conservative. Sure they're religious nutballs (or at least pander to them well), but they've grown government power and spending on a scale never before seen. As best I can tell, it's not even terribly effective, aside from stomping all over some of our liberties and instilling a general state of paranoia. Plus, it seems like everything is "secret" now, and if you dare ask how well your government is working, then you're a terrorist (or at least want to help them). I'm sorry, "Just trust us, we're the government" will absolutely never, ever fly with me. Government must be open and accountable to the citizens from whom it derives power. I voted Kerry in 2004, not because I thought I could stomach his views, but because I would have taken anything over the damage I thought W could do. Quite frankly I'm not sure even the most dyed-in-the-wool liberal could match W for magic gubmint-growin' action.
Obama's on my short list of candidates I'll consider for President right now. Sure, he's a little liberal for my taste, but based on what I've read about him, he comes off as a smart guy. I'd take a smart guy whom I disagree with over a dolt who just parrots views similar to mine any day. I'm not thrilled about this myspace crap, but I won't become a single-issue voter either. That would put me in the same league as the religious nutjobs. Giuliani would be the other high contender for me - he's conservative on the economic side, and a little liberal on the social side.
McCain, well, I just don't trust him anymore. I used to think I'd be willing to consider voting for him, but there's been too much buddying up with W in the last six years.
It may not be a gas, but it has an extremely high vapor pressure and evaporates easily as I recall. Open the windows, get a fan, and call it a day.
Now in addition to OMG TERRORISTS! and OMG RADIATION! we can add the new one, OMG MERCURY!
Seriously, folks, time to get a basic grasp on risks. That mercury probably has a very negligible risk of impacting your health when compared to getting in your car to drive to work tomorrow morning.
Ever heard of a *routing table*? Pretty easy to send IP requests elsewhere...
That said, yes, the nasty activation crap has repelled me for some time. I have enough legit licenses, it's just that they don't necessarily go with the hardware on which they're now running. Plus I like to use one image for everything, so that when a machine goes wonky, I can just reimage it and restore the user data.
Finally, somebody said it. I completely agree with you, and something else that should be taken into account is the fact that the more closely matched your power supply design capacity and your load, typically the more efficiently the supply will run.
There is *one* setup that could require the BFPS - Geforce 8800 GTXs running in SLI. Those bastards chew up like 160W each. Figure 360W total just for the two vid boards. Then figure another 150W to run the rest of the system at peak load (drives, dual core proc, buttload of memory, etc.) Still comes in under 600, though, but you'd probably want a 600 just to be on the safe side.
Modern PSUs, particularly cheap ones, still bite on efficiency. After taking measurements of mine, it was only about 65% efficient. Therefore, I junked it and replaced it with a very nice 80Plus-certified supply. Much cooler... My system now idles at about 100W (no monitor, that's another 90 or so), and heads for hibernation (S4) after about 30 minutes of inactivity.
A laptop drive takes about 1.5W just sitting there, whereas a 7200rpm desktop drive usually idles at about 8-15W, depending on the breed. My house server got its main drive replaced by a 5400rpm laptop drive about a year ago. Much quieter, cooler, and lower power, and there's no real downside since nothing on there particularly requires high speed disk access.
Other reasons Bees are gone.. Duh, it's for the children. Don't you know how much bee stings hurt?:)
(And they really hurt me - I'm deathly allergic to the little buggers... But I'm not a children. I'm a fat, lazy, balding old man, so nobody would do anything on my account.)
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As evidence I don't watch either anymore, I had forgotten that MNF moved to ESPN off of broadcast. Whoops.
I can understand something like DirecTV, where you're explicitly paying for certain content and as such, it constitutes a "license". What baffles me is MNF is a *broadcast* thing, meaning anybody with a crappy TV set and antenna can pick it up. It's not like in the US, buying a TV set in any way contributes to the content providers. For fuck's sake, if you don't want people to watch it, don't broadcast it. Anything blasted over the public airwaves should be available for public viewing, be that a TV in my bedroom or in the corner of my favorite bar.
IMHO, the NFL and MLB have gotten *way* too disconnected from the fact that it's fans that make the money. I like both sports, but I now refuse to watch either NFL or major league baseball games - live or televised. I'd rather go support my local minor league baseball team and the NHL, who seems very reasonable about the whole thing.
Well said - dated just about every other coloration and ethnicity, but never your stereotype "blonde bombshell". Not that I haven't had the chance, but I'm just not physically attracted to them, and I'm pretty much your stereotypic white male of western European decent (Welsh, Scottish, and German, mainly).
So it's a slight tangent from the main topic, but I got yet another letter today from my bank, letting me know that my bank card number was amongst those harvested from a compromised card processor, and that my card number would be cancelled and reissued within a few days.
My favorite part? "For privacy reasons, the name of the processor cannot be revealed." I think it should be a fucking law that they have to name the guilty party in these sorts of things, so that we (everyone whose number was compromised) can sue their asses into oblivion. It's a significant inconvenience to change my card number everywhere when I'm home, and it's a *REAL* problem when I'm on a two week trip in Alaska and suddenly, without warning, my card doesn't work and I have only the cash left in my pocket (plus my real credit card, but some places in the far north only take cash...) This is the third time in as many years that they've done this to me.
How I'd love to be able to break out legal whoopass on those stupid card processors that are retarded enough to have their systems compromised, and recover damages for both the hours it takes me to change over all of my auto-bill stuff, as well as some punitive damages for them being dumbfucks.
Some things, like politicians and SCO execs, look like rats up close, too.
Actually, I agree a lot with the grandparent poster - I, too, drive an old Honda (1995 del Sol in my case - with something like 245,000 on it) most of the time, and I'd put it right up against one of these Smart buggers any day. It's not a light car for a small 2-seater - about 2500 pounds - but they can make up to about 40mpg, do remarkably well in collisions and have dual airbags (for those that would argue the lack of modern safety features). I drive it all over the place - it's been to Alaska, Mexico, both coasts, etc. It's been my faithful travel companion for years. Best part is that I paid only about $4000 for it, 150,000 miles ago.
I've seen pictures of one that got hit in the rear by a full-sized Chevy truck, with something like a 50mph speed difference at the point of collision. The Honda is totaled, but I know the driver, and he immediately got out after the wreck and started cussing out the other driver.
I agree. Professional programmer here as well, and IDEs significantly improve my productivity and accuracy. IDEs aren't a new Windows thing - I still remember the Turbo C environment for DOS. Having an integrated, interactive debugger is incredibly useful...
Completely open to attack? Um, I don't think so. The key to not getting viruses, trojans, and other uglies on Windows is - *drumroll* - don't be a dumbfuck. Let's cover the basics - hardware NAT device between you and the tubes, Firefox, set a strong admin password, don't run random attachments, run Windows Update regularly, get a decent virus scanner and keep it updated, and preferably use anything but Outlook for email. I've run this way for years and never, never, never had any sort of security problems. Ever. My dad (definitely not a computer guy) is basically set up the same way, and again, no problems. With some very simple changes, it's possible for Win2k/WinXP to be "secure enough" as an end user computer.
Agreed - an Asterisk-based PBX is *not* overkill if you're already putting in a central home control server of some sort, particularly if you have anybody else living with you (spouse, kids, etc.) I have a three story house (basement, 1st, 2nd floors), and will often call my wife in her office (2nd floor) on the from the basement if I just have a quick question. Plus, it lets you do fun things like have an extension that routes through to your cell, etc., if you have enough incoming and outgoing circuits to do it.
Mine is tied in via a Sipura 3000 - it works, but there is a bit of echo sometimes. A word of advice - if you're not going VoIP all the way back to the telco, put a good old hard-wired phone on the incoming POTS line, ahead of all your fancy gear. In the event that your PBX bombs out, or power is out for an extended period, this can be invaluable.
Phishing, maybe if enough real organizations support it - spam, no fix here, folks. The only thing DKIM prevents is domain spoofing. So spammers have to have a real domain and sign their mail - that's so incredibly hard to do that I don't think any spammer wil... er, wait, a quick check of my spam box shows an unbelievable number are signed correctly.
On the other hand, if spammers are authenticating with a real domain, then filtering based on RBLs just got easier...
Also, exim guys - we could really use MTA-level support for DKIM on outgoing mail...
Well said... There's nothing like good ol' ANSI C when it comes to building a cross-platform core business component library. (That said, I do write in C++, PHP, Python, Forth, and several flavors of assembly as well...)
I guarantee you, for embedded development and drivers, C and ASM aren't going anywhere, possibly extended with a few C++ features.
I'm thrilled to hear this - MS is more than large enough to squash this moron for good. It's a rare day I root for Microsoft, but by all means Bill, break out them lawyers and use 'em!
My new DC7700 at work isn't a standard ATX power supply, and has a crippled BIOS that locks out the VT-x virtualization instructions. Seriously, I thought the same about Dell-vs-HP as you did before this experience. Now I realize that HP is following them down the road to "value add" hell.
Not really - mark me down in the luddite curmudgeon category as well. Personally I still miss my *mobile* phone - you know, the kind with a full-sized handset and a radio box mounted under your seat in the car. Sure, it wasn't terribly portable, but being analog and equipped with something like a 3W radio, that sucker could make and receive calls in places today's phones can only dream of... Plus, being analog, you could actually *understand* the person on the other end.
Hrm, not sure to write you off as a troll or respond, but ah, what the hell, I'll respond. Like many of us, I'm not anti-copyright. I firmly support the rights of an artist or inventor to control their work for a limited time in order to profit from it. (For reference, I'm both. I hold two patents, and I'm a published semi-professional photographer in my spare time.) The problem is that copyright was originally a deal struck between the general populous and the creative folk - the deal being that the creators get limited exclusivity in exchange for the eventuality that their creation will fall into public domain. This is the foundation of the US Constitution's core intellectual property provision: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
The problem is that the deal has become lop-sided. There's no way that an author's great grandchildren holding the rights to his writings up to 70 years after he died promotes the progress of science or the useful arts. That's just called greed. The author doesn't create more if he knows his distant descendants will still be extorting money for almost a century after he kicks off.
Arguably, the public domain is also vitally important to progress. Think about all the inventions that would have been lost or the massive inflation of prices (due to royalties) if patents were essentially perpetual as well. Think about historians in 100 years, trying to figure out if they can reprint a photo out of fear that someone, somewhere will show up and demand royalties because the photo was taken by their great-great-grandfather. It's already a nightmare figuring out reproduction rights.
The system is broken, and stronger penalties won't fix it. Existing punishments are adequate if enforced against the real problem - large scale commercial piracy. Sane copyright terms, in conjunction with media companies not treating customers like felons, would be a good start.
I agree - my first thought when I saw this was "well, break out the soldering iron or the wire clippers". I have this obnoxious USB 2.0 hub I bought off eBay. It really works quite well, but it has about a zillion multicolored LEDs that light up and blink and mean absolutely zilch (seriously, nothing to do with port status). So I just desoldered them all and reused some of the cooler ones in other projects. Plus, it keeps my office from emitting an eerie glow that keeps me up at night...
So I suppose whatever OS you're using only has one thread/process running at a time? I've never understood the argument that multi-core doesn't benefit the desktop user. As I look at my machine right now, I have two development environments going (one actually in debug), four browser windows, an email client, an IM client, various background junk (virus scanner, 802.1x client for the wireless), and of course the OS itself - XP. None of those needs a more powerful proc, but it's nice when they're all grabbing for CPU time that I have two cores for them to run on.
At home I'm often converting images from RAW in the background and doing postprocessing on them in the foreground. RAW->JPEG conversion is CPU intensive, and it's nice that it doesn't bring my system to its knees while doing it. I can continue about my work, while the converter is maxing out one of the cores in the background.
I've had dual procs since 1996, and would never, ever, ever go back. It's so nice to not have everything stall when a background job starts hogging the CPU.
I used to have the same problem, so I eventually installed a relay in the incoming phone line. Based on a timer, the relay would open the circuit between the hours of 10pm and 7am, disconnecting the internal phones from the telco. Thus, no annoying rings in the middle of the night to wake me up. The rest of the time (which is any time I'd call out or anybody reasonable would call in), everything worked normally.
I figured no harm done, as in a real emergency, my friends, family, and wife would call my cell.
Agreed, you assume conservative=religious nut. I absolutely abhor the religious right, but I tend to take a very conservative view of government - it should be small, efficient, incredibly transparent to the citizenry, and should do its dead level best to not interfere in the lives of normal citizens. Anything beyond that should be viewed with a very skeptical eye by the citizenry. I view that as a means to an end - government should not hinder personal liberty unless the exercise of a particular freedom directly prevents another person from exercising theirs. Call me wacky like that.
This current administration has been the ultimate in anti-conservative. Sure they're religious nutballs (or at least pander to them well), but they've grown government power and spending on a scale never before seen. As best I can tell, it's not even terribly effective, aside from stomping all over some of our liberties and instilling a general state of paranoia. Plus, it seems like everything is "secret" now, and if you dare ask how well your government is working, then you're a terrorist (or at least want to help them). I'm sorry, "Just trust us, we're the government" will absolutely never, ever fly with me. Government must be open and accountable to the citizens from whom it derives power. I voted Kerry in 2004, not because I thought I could stomach his views, but because I would have taken anything over the damage I thought W could do. Quite frankly I'm not sure even the most dyed-in-the-wool liberal could match W for magic gubmint-growin' action.
Obama's on my short list of candidates I'll consider for President right now. Sure, he's a little liberal for my taste, but based on what I've read about him, he comes off as a smart guy. I'd take a smart guy whom I disagree with over a dolt who just parrots views similar to mine any day. I'm not thrilled about this myspace crap, but I won't become a single-issue voter either. That would put me in the same league as the religious nutjobs. Giuliani would be the other high contender for me - he's conservative on the economic side, and a little liberal on the social side.
McCain, well, I just don't trust him anymore. I used to think I'd be willing to consider voting for him, but there's been too much buddying up with W in the last six years.
It may not be a gas, but it has an extremely high vapor pressure and evaporates easily as I recall. Open the windows, get a fan, and call it a day.
Now in addition to OMG TERRORISTS! and OMG RADIATION! we can add the new one, OMG MERCURY!
Seriously, folks, time to get a basic grasp on risks. That mercury probably has a very negligible risk of impacting your health when compared to getting in your car to drive to work tomorrow morning.
Ever heard of a *routing table*? Pretty easy to send IP requests elsewhere...
That said, yes, the nasty activation crap has repelled me for some time. I have enough legit licenses, it's just that they don't necessarily go with the hardware on which they're now running. Plus I like to use one image for everything, so that when a machine goes wonky, I can just reimage it and restore the user data.
Finally, somebody said it. I completely agree with you, and something else that should be taken into account is the fact that the more closely matched your power supply design capacity and your load, typically the more efficiently the supply will run.
There is *one* setup that could require the BFPS - Geforce 8800 GTXs running in SLI. Those bastards chew up like 160W each. Figure 360W total just for the two vid boards. Then figure another 150W to run the rest of the system at peak load (drives, dual core proc, buttload of memory, etc.) Still comes in under 600, though, but you'd probably want a 600 just to be on the safe side.
Modern PSUs, particularly cheap ones, still bite on efficiency. After taking measurements of mine, it was only about 65% efficient. Therefore, I junked it and replaced it with a very nice 80Plus-certified supply. Much cooler... My system now idles at about 100W (no monitor, that's another 90 or so), and heads for hibernation (S4) after about 30 minutes of inactivity.
A laptop drive takes about 1.5W just sitting there, whereas a 7200rpm desktop drive usually idles at about 8-15W, depending on the breed. My house server got its main drive replaced by a 5400rpm laptop drive about a year ago. Much quieter, cooler, and lower power, and there's no real downside since nothing on there particularly requires high speed disk access.
(And they really hurt me - I'm deathly allergic to the little buggers... But I'm not a children. I'm a fat, lazy, balding old man, so nobody would do anything on my account.)