This case only one such example of the WTO is trying to override US sovereignty. The World Trade Organization backed Codex Alimentarius food rules will soon make it illegal to purchase high dosage vitamins from health food stores in the U.S. when the rules go into effect globally December 31, 2009. It's Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG), only permits only ultra low doses of vitamins. You will then no longer be able to buy significant dosages of most vitamins and minerals from your local heath food store because they will become illegal in the U.S. The Codex Alimentarius rules will also require the U.S. to start accepting foods which have been treated with pesticides which have been illegal in the U.S. for years. The Codex Alientarius food rules have been written by pro-pharmacutical and pro-chemical interests in Germany and Europe and the power of the WTO is being used to force those rules on unwilling American consumers and voters. Here is a quote from a document that is on the HealthFreedomUSA.org website:
Codex Alimentarius is backed up by the crippling trade sanctions of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Any non Codex-compliant nation would face huge economic punishment since they would automatically lose in any food-trade dispute with a Codex compliant country.
We would automatically lose any food-trade dispute if we are not Codex compliant. Because of that, Congress is now in the process overturning an early 1990s pro-vitamin law that had been hard won by a grass roots movement of large numbers of health food consumers. Congress in working towards making the U.S. Codex compliant within the next couple of years so that we will not face trade sanctions. The voters need to wake up to how the World Trade Organization (WTO) is overriding U.S. Sovereignty and start another grass roots movement to tackle issues such as Codex Alimentarius.
According to one episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," vampires have a lower thermal output than normal humans and do not show up on infrared cameras. So if the other occupant in your car is a vampire you could now end up being pulled over if you try to drive in high-occupancy lane of the freeway.
I have not actually seen that particular episode, but it is mentioned on page 13 of the book, The Physics of the Buffyverse. Here is a quote from page 13:
This is a boon to the secret, demon-hunting government agency living in Sunnydale. Using infrared detectors, its operatives are able to locate a vampire moving among humans. Vampires, being dead, have a lower thermal output and thus show up exactly at the temperature of their environment, compared to a human's 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. So if one person in a crowded room registers at room tempterature, compared to surrounding hotter bodies, that person is most likely a vampire. "We got a cold one," one soldier says upon locating Spike with a similar device.
So don't invite a vampire to ride with you, just so will be able to use the high-occupancy lane. The new infrared system will just see one occupant in your car and you will be pulled over.
My only experience with using a slide rule was back in the 1960s in an 8th grade math class where we spent two weeks learning to use slide rules. We were just 8th graders, but were able to use a few basic features of something that was normally used mostly by scientists and engineers. Mr. Turner, our math instructor, even wore a small slide rule as a tie clasp. I suspect that the use of slide rules was something that probably was not normally taught to 8th graders.
Later on in Junior College, I once thought about possibly taking a 1 credit slide rule class, but didn't. That was in the days back before pocket calculators. In the College Algebra class our textbook had Log tables, a square root table and various other tables in the appendixes in the back which we used to get answers without a pocket calculator (or a slide rule).
I still have my dad's old Ivory and wood slide rule that he bought back in the 1950s and also a more modern plastic slide rule which I later purchased. I am plan to briefly brush up on how to use them just for the heck of it.
Computers vary quite a bit in how much power they use. My dual-core AMD-64 4200 is currently plugged into a Kill-A-Watt meter and according to the meter it is using 81 Watts at the moment. It occasionally uses much more power for short periods of time during heavy usage. The 20-inch LCD flat screen monitor was using an additional 38 Watts when I last checked. When the screen goes blank into the sleep mode the monitor's usage drops to only 1 Watt.The computer's video card is an AGP video card has the GeForce FX 5200 chip set and 256 MB of video RAM. It also has 2 GB of RAM and two hard drives with a total of 500 GB of hard disk space. The power supply is a 430 Watt power supply if I remember correctly.
I also have an AOpen mini-PC with a 1.83 GHz Core2 Duo that only uses about 23 Watts, not counting the monitor. The monitor uses about 38 Watts. It is the same monitor that I mentioned above. I use a KVM switch to control either computer with just one keyboard, monitor and mouse. The AOpen computer does not use much power because it has a motherboard and other components that are similar to what would be used in a laptop computer.
I have not yet bothered to measure how much power is used by other external components such as the DSL router, the UPS, the KVM switch, the speakers or the occasionally used external hard drive.
I am not a technician, but the use of an efficient 80-Plus power supply would also help save power. The 80 PLUS performance specification requires power supplies in computers and servers to be 80% or greater energy efficient at 20%, 50% and 100% of rated load.
I am no math expert, but am old enough to remember using a slide rule. Back in the mid-1960s, I was in a 8th grade math class where we were taught the basics of using a slide rule. Mr Turner, the math teacher even had a small slide-rule on his tie clip. Slide rules are now an obsolete technology that many younger people probably don't even know about. Inexpense pocket calculators have made them obsolete.
Later on I took a couple of Algebra courses in High School and later on at a Junior College. Instead of just using a pocket calculator, the back of the textbook had several large appendixes with tables for looking up the answers to logarithms, square roots and various other types of calculations. I was not like we could just use a pocket calculator to find the answer. If the exact number we were looking for was not in the table, we sometimes had to use interpelation to come up with an estimated answer based on the two nearest answers (not that I remember how to do that).
Back in the early 1970s (or late 1960s) I remember a cover of Popular Science Magazine with a headline about a pocket calculator for only about $800. Even more amazing was a another cover not too long after that with the headline about calculators for under $100. For $100 you could get a pocket calculator that could add, subtract, multiply and divide.
Here are a couple of slide rule links, although the link to the free book about using slide rules from Gutenberg.org, was down when I last tired it.
I have run across several good documentary DVDs and video links that are critical of the Federal Reserve. I am not an expert and I have not yet heard from experts on both sides of the issue, so I have not drawn any final conclusions on the issue. What I have heard so far is quite thought provoking and gives me great concern for our financial future. In general I am slightly uncomfortable with conspiracy theories, so I am not sure what to believe. But, in my non-expert opinion, what they say about history and economics makes sense and is probably actually true.
Here are the books, DVDs and video links on the subject that I have run across so far:
I hope to eventually find a more balanced, unbiased, two sided discussion of the subject by experts on both sides. So far I have only heard from the conspiracy theorists, because the mainstream press has never even mentioned the subject. I try to keep my mind open to what both sides might have to say about the subject. I would also like to hear what an actual economist has to say. Any good links for an opposing view?
By the way, I have not yet actually finished looking at all those DVDs and books yet, but the ones that I have seen were quite interesting. How do I decide what to believe and what not to believe with all this conspiracy stuff, especially when the mainstream press refuses to give an opposing viewpoint or even touch the subject.
For years, I would get those annoying DSL fliers in my telephone bills for DSL. Then I would call them and they would always say, "sorry, but DSL is not available where you live." I complained about constantly getting the DSL ads, so they did stop sending me the ads. DSL finally did became available here last Fall at 1.5Mbps download and 800K upload.
What also annoyed me, was having to watch all those TV commercials that would make disparaging comments about dial-up and would then say that I should get DSL or cable. They always made it sound like it was actually a choice for anyone.
Back in the late 1990s, there was a commercial about a poor deprived child with a tear in his eye, because he only had a 28.8K modem when all his friends had a 56K modem. Well, I had a 56K modem, but the local phone lines were only good for 26.4K. I did not even have the 28.8 speed that the poor deprived little boy was crying about. I finally now have DSL, but until recently, I would be sitting here on 26.4K dial-up and having to listen to all those TV commercials about cable or DSL.
I live on the edge of a smaller city in Northern Arizona and could only get 26.4K dial-up, up until last fall. The telephone company finally installed a new switch nearby and also 3 miles of new underground conduit. DSL finally then became available. Most people in town had cable, but I had not been able to get cable where I live. The telephone lines here were only good for 26.4K when using a 56K modem.
The DSL at my location is 1.5 Mbps download and 800 Kbps upload which I plenty for what I do.
Oops, I had not read the parent post very carefully. I did not notice that he was talking about slowness on a broadband connection. I have never had cable and don't know about that, but my DSL connection always seems to download files at exactly 161 KB/sec every time (except when the distant FTP server on the other end is slowed down from too many users).
Up until last fall, neither DSL or cable was not available where I live and all I had was a 26.4K dial-up connection when using a 56K modem. DSL finally became available last Fall after the telephone company installed a new switch nearby. They also dug a 3 mile long ditch with new conduit running to that building. I am now am happy to have a DSL connection with 1.5 Mbps download and 800 Kbps upload speed.
I live on the outer edge of a small city in the mountains of Northern Arizona. To compensate for the slowness of the 26.4K connection, I would try to have the next webpage being loaded in a new tab before I had finished reading the other webpage. That way it would not need to watch the webpage slowly being loaded. I also avoided wasting bandwidth by blocking as many ads as possible in the host file. Downloading large security updates or a really large file would sometimes take and hour more, but I did not sit there watching it download.
I use "Mike's Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file." With a modified hosts file, the advertising related URLs are blocked for both Internet Explorer and for Firefox. I use the modified hosts file on both my Windows computer and my Linux computer. It blocks known advertising related URLs by diverting them to the computers local loop back address at 127.0.0.1. I also download updated versions of his modified hosts file when they become available.
A few days ago, I was using Firefox on the Linux box while I was shopping for some amateur radio equipment. I went to a webpage and almost immediately, a rather agressive large advertisement appeared claiming that they had detected hundreds of links related to porn or spyware related links or something like that in my browser (I can't remember exactly what it said). The advertisement offered to clean my computer for free. I looked down at the bottom of the screen and saw a URL with drivecleaner in the name. I tried to close the advertisement from the upper right corner of the box, but it refused close. I then clicked the "No", but another box appeared saying something about possibly running or downloading a Windows program that ended with a.EXE extension. A box then appeared asking if I wanted to download and try to run the Windows program under Wine. I said no!
After that, I add them to the computer's hosts file with 127.0.0.1 in front of their name so that their attempts to connect to their URL will be diverted to my computer's loop back address. I then went back to the same web page, as a test, and their advertisement did not appear this time. I then went over to my Windows computer and also added that line to its hosts file too. On some routers that could also be blocked there too. Whoever they are, I don't want their ads or their attempted drive by downloads.
By the way, I also have the Konqueror browser on my Linux computer and it offers the option of having it tell other websites that I am using whatever version of Internet Explorer and Windows I want it to say. That will, more often than not, allow access to websites which try to block everyone that is not using Internet Explorer.
His new patent seems to be quite similar to what Katherine Albrecht had warned against back in October 2005 in the book "SPYCHIPS: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move." She not only warns us about business tracking us with RFID tags but also mentions to other related technologies such as shopper's ID cards. I can't recall if she specifically mentioned cell phones and GPS devices or not, but she definitely discusses the idea of "targeted advertising" and various related technologies. She had also founded Spychips.com and NoCards.org as opposition to that general type of thing.
Perhaps the inventor might have also seen a couple of the examples of tracking and "targeted advertising" that were in the movie "Minority Report."
Back before he supposedly invented the idea, I had already purchased an RFID blocking wallet and started leaving my cell phone behind in my truck, before entering shopping malls. That was to protect my privacy against his not yet invented new idea.
The article says that there is one wavelength that gets everybody. Perhaps criminals will soon probably be wearing special sunglasses or contact lenses with a special coating that totally blocks that particular frequency. The sunglasses might even block everything except for a narrow limited range of frequencies. If a criminal was not already wearing the special sunglasses he will probably be running with his eyes closed and swearing as he pulls them out of his pocket and puts them on.
However, if a policeman were to see someone walking around late at night wearing the special sunglasses, they might be inclined to ask a few questions. If they were to have a problem with anyone wearing sunglasses late at night they would probably also choose a different weapon.
I have a 13 inch television which I watch from a chair 12 feet away on the other side of the room. I doubt that I could see any benefit from using Blu-Ray instead of an ordinary DVD on the 13 inch TV from that distance.
The only larger screen that I have is the 20 inch LCD flatscreen on my computer (not a wide screen). I use larger screen on the computer, because, as I became middle-aged, I found that I needed reading glasses to see close up and the larger monitor helped greatly. However, watching TV on a 13 inch TV 12 feet away is still absolutely no problem and I am satisfied with that setup.
By the way, one advantage to becoming middle aged is that I can no longer hear that loud, annoying, high-pitched noise that I had to put up with for decades, coming from TVs and computer monitors in the 1960s through the 1980s or so. Most people could not hear the high-pitched frequency. I am not sure if new TVs still make the annoying high-pitched noise or not, since I can't here it anymore. Television manufacturers must not have cared about an annoying high-pitched noise that only a small percentage of their customers could here.
I get 6 channels from the electronically amplified rabbit ears antenna on my 13 inch TV. There are still no over-the-air HDTV channels being broadcast where I live and that will soon be a problem when they turn off the over-the-air analog broadcasts here is the U.S. in another year or two. I will then need to see if it is possible to get cable where I live, or if not, perhaps I will get a satellite dish or maybe just rent DVDs of movies and my favorite TV shows instead. I do not suppose you would describe me as an early adopter of new types of television and video technologies.
I actually have two external hard drives and the one that I had connected at that moment actually had FAT32 on the first partition. Somehow the JFS partition got slightly messed up, I may possibly have switched it off under Windows when it was not yet safe to do so (possibly). Since there wasn't anything important on either partition, I recreated the partitions just now and decided to use four partitions this time. The first is now a small NTFS partion, the second is a small EXT2 partion, the third is a huge JFS partition, and the fourth is a FAT32 partition.
As a test, just now, I switched back and forth several times between Windows and Linux and created or edited files on various partitions each time. I did not have any problems this time.
I also went ahead and used rsync again to start back of some of my files again onto the huge JFS partition. I plan to keep one of the external hard drives stored safely elsewhere just in case the building ever burns down or my computer ever gets stolen. The data is not real important since this is just a home computer, but I still believe in backing up stuff anyway.
I should add, that I actually only started using the external hard drive a few days ago. I have not yet chance to test the setup yet much. I had used it under Linux some, but had only tried it under Windows about once a day or so ago. When I tried going back and forth between operating systems just now, I experienced a slight problem with the JFS partition. Most likely, I will quickly get it solved and working properly. But anyway, this is not a setup that I have not tested much yet and did experience one problem just now. I just thought I should warn you.
The other stuff such as the KVM switch I have been using longer and that part seems to be working perfectly.
I have an external USB hard drive and recently formatted the hard drive with two different partitions. The first partition is formatted as NTFS and the second is formatted as JFS. The NTFS partition is mainly for Windows, but can also be used for transferring files between Linux and Windows. The JFS partition is only for being used by Linux. When using Linux, I can now make backup copies of stuff from my main Linux partitions onto the exteral drive's JFS partition using the rsync command. Perhaps I am being too paranoid, but I did not want Windows spyware or viruses to be able mess with what is backed up on that partition, so I deliberately chose something that Windows could not read. I use Kubuntu Linux and JFS is one of the several journaling file systems that it supports. I could have just as easily used some other Linux supported journaling file system such as EXT3 or ReiserFS, but for no special reason, I chose JFS. For the partition that Windows would use, I debated between NTFS and FAT32. I also toyed with the idea of formatting that partition as EXT2 and installing of of the several available open source drivers that would allow Windows XP to read EXT2. Linux is what I use 99% of the time and because it is my main operating system, I decided to make the JFS partition much larger and gave it 220 GB.
I have two different computers and use a KVM switch so that they can be controlled by just one keyboard, monitor and mouse. The two computers are side by side and one runs Linux and the other runs Windows XP. Most of the time I just use the Linux computer, but once in a while I turn on the Windows computer too and with the KVM switch can jump back and fort between either in about a second or two. The Windows computer is a small book sized computer that only uses 23 Watts, so I can occasionally run both at once without using much more electricity. I play around with Windows XP now and then, so that I do not totally forget to use and maintain a Windows computer.
I have the 250 GB hard drive in a NexStar GX external hard drive enclosure and it is connected to a manual 4-to-1 USB switch box. I then press the appropriate button on the manual USB Switch box to choose which computer the external hard drive is hooked to. For the first partion, I let Windows create the NTFS partion. I then used GParted running under Linux to create the JFS partition. By the way, I already had both the Ubuntu desktop package and the Kubuntu desktop package installed, so I was able to install GParted and run it under KDE, even though it is designed for Gnome.
Another alternative to all this would have been to run Samba on the Linux computer and just share a few folders at home over a wired or wireless Ethernet connection.
It sounds like he is a real life Buckaroo Banzai, like in the 1984 movie "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension."Buckaroo Banazi was a rock star, particle physicist, neurosurgeon, and race car driver. So, it really is possible to do all that! That was the movie where Earth was invaded by aliens flew around in space ships which looked like giant sea shells.
Just to clarify one point that I just made, when I say that my older single-core socket-939 AMD-64 3800+ computer uses 94 Watts when it is idle, that does not include what the monitor uses. I did not have the monitor plugged into the meter
You mentioned power supplies that use 35W when the computer is off. Just for comparison, my Kill-A-Watt meter shows that when my computer is off it uses 11 Watts. It has a several year old, fanless 350 Watt power supply that Antec used to make, which was supposed to be more efficient (and expensive) than most power supplies. I also recently used the meter on another computer which has a fairly new 80 Plus power supply, which also happened to be made by Antec and it used 13 Watts when it was off.
The power supply in one of they two computers meets the new 80 Plus power supply specification. According to a web page about 80 Plus: "The 80 Plus performance specification requires power supplies in computers and servers to be 80% or greater energy efficient at 20%, 50% and 100% of rated load with a true power factor of 0.9 or greater."
Some of the newer CRTs may not be as bad as the older ones. As I mentioned elsewhere, I recently hooked the Kill-A-Watt meter to my 19-inch Philips 109B CRT monitor which I no longer use and found that is was only using 64 - 84 Watts depending on the color of the background. I also have a 20-inch LCD monitor, that I now use instead, which usually uses about 40-41 Watts. Today, when I measured it, it happened to only be using 35 - 37 Watts depending on background color, for some reason.
When my 1 1/2 year old AMD-64 3800+ computer is booting up it uses a peak of 159 Watts. Once it has booted up, the processor sees that it is not being asked to do much so it drops the clock speed from 2.4 GHz back to 1 GHz to save power and is then only using 94 Watts at that point. Kubuntu Linux automatically enabled that feature which AMD calls the Cool n' Quiet feature. When asked to do something more demanding the AMD-64 processor jumps back to 2.4 GHz for as long as necessary. I once used an earlier version of Slackware Linux which did not seem to support that feature on the default kernel that they used back then. If I am not mistaken, I believe that the Intel Core 2 Duo may also have some kind of somewhat similar power saving feature, but I am not totally sure. The number of hard drives, PCI cards, amount of memory and type of video card would also have some effect on how much power my computer uses.
I am not an expert or a technician, but that is what I got when measuring power usage at home, on my computers, with a Kill-A-Watt meter.
I also forgot to mention that on most days the 20-inch Dell 2007FP LCD flat screen monitor uses 40 Watts, which is slightly more that what I am measuring today. I don't know if the 1600 x 1200 resolution and whatever refresh rate that it uses affects things or not.
The 19-inch CRT that I mentioned in my post above, which I no longer use, is a 19-inch Philips 109B CRT monitor. I am mentioning that because, I just noticed other nearby posts about CRT monitors which use more power. Those might be older monitors. Perhaps, some of the newer CRTs may not be as bad about using power as they once were. I wonder if the refresh rate or resolution has any effect on a CRT's power consumption? I should try checking that sometime too.
I hooked up a Kill-A-Watt meter to my monitor again, just now, to see for myself if dark colors save power on my monitor. In the past, I had noticed that my 19 inch CRT monitor's power usage varied from 64 - 84 Watts depending on background color. With the CRT monitor, the dark color used about 20 Watts less. In the sleep mode, when the screen was blank it only used a little over 1 Watt.
My new monitor is a 20-inch Dell 2007FP flat panel LCD monitor which I will test right now. With Firefox running under Linux, I have Blackle.com open in one tab and Google.com open in another tab. Looking at the Kill-A-Watt meter, I get 35 Watts for Blackle.com and 37 Watts for Google.com. So using a dark color on my 20-inch Dell 2007FP flat panel monitor only saves 2 Watts. In the sleep mode, when the monitor goes blank, it only uses 1 Watt.
Oddly enough the power consumption on both my monitor and the rest of the computer varies from day to day by about 3 Watts. I am not sure if that is due to variations in room temperature or the daily variations in the voltage of the electricity that I get from the power company or what. At the moment the voltage here is 124.5 volts, sometimes it has been about 118 volts. The power company has come out twice, in the last decade or so, to adjusted the transformer on the nearby power pole to raise or lower the voltage.
So anyway, Blackle.com only saved 2 Watts on my 20-inch LCD flat panel monitor, which is not very much compared the the 100 Watt light bulb that is on in a nearby lamp. Just in case you had to ask, according to the Kill-A-Watt meter, the 100 Watt light bulb in one of the lamps is using 100 Watts and the 100 Watt light bulb in the other lamp is using 94 Watts. Switching to a more efficient type of light bulb would help much more than using Blackle.com.
Ooops, forget the part about having it play the messages back by Morse code. I forgot that I usually need to write down what I am receiving letter by letter and then read it back afterwards. If I brought paper and pencil on my hikes, I might as well bring my glasses too. So skip the CW playback idea. I did not take the time to think the problem through fully and that part of the idea was flawed. Sending by Morse code might still be good though.
Since I can't see the display without my reading glasses, it might also be nice to be able to convert the most recently received text message to Morse code and have it played to me. It could then play the most recently received message by pressing one of the two telegraph key shaped buttons which I could easily identify without my glasses. It could be kind of like the button on some answering machines, which plays the message again each time it is pressed. The other telegraph key shaped button would be of a different color and shape and would be used to initiate the entering of text by Morse code. Perhaps, selecting the recipient of the message could also be done without having to look at the display, if I have their telephone number or email address memorized. Before sending the message, I could have it play the phone number and message back to me by Morse code (at my usual preferred speed) so that I could verify that it is free of serious errors. Some people can send or receive Morse code fairly quickly.
None of my current friends or relatives use text messaging much, so at the moment I would not get a chance to use that feature as much as I might like. But anyway, that is my 2 cents worth on what I would like on my cell phone. Please skip all the other fancy features.
Slashdot Mirror
This case only one such example of the WTO is trying to override US sovereignty. The World Trade Organization backed Codex Alimentarius food rules will soon make it illegal to purchase high dosage vitamins from health food stores in the U.S. when the rules go into effect globally December 31, 2009. It's Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (VMG), only permits only ultra low doses of vitamins. You will then no longer be able to buy significant dosages of most vitamins and minerals from your local heath food store because they will become illegal in the U.S. The Codex Alimentarius rules will also require the U.S. to start accepting foods which have been treated with pesticides which have been illegal in the U.S. for years. The Codex Alientarius food rules have been written by pro-pharmacutical and pro-chemical interests in Germany and Europe and the power of the WTO is being used to force those rules on unwilling American consumers and voters. Here is a quote from a document that is on the HealthFreedomUSA.org website:
Codex Alimentarius is backed up by the crippling trade sanctions of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Any non Codex-compliant nation would face huge economic punishment since they would automatically lose in any food-trade dispute with a Codex compliant country.We would automatically lose any food-trade dispute if we are not Codex compliant. Because of that, Congress is now in the process overturning an early 1990s pro-vitamin law that had been hard won by a grass roots movement of large numbers of health food consumers. Congress in working towards making the U.S. Codex compliant within the next couple of years so that we will not face trade sanctions. The voters need to wake up to how the World Trade Organization (WTO) is overriding U.S. Sovereignty and start another grass roots movement to tackle issues such as Codex Alimentarius.
Codex Alimentarius Summarized in 7 Points
According to one episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," vampires have a lower thermal output than normal humans and do not show up on infrared cameras. So if the other occupant in your car is a vampire you could now end up being pulled over if you try to drive in high-occupancy lane of the freeway.
I have not actually seen that particular episode, but it is mentioned on page 13 of the book, The Physics of the Buffyverse. Here is a quote from page 13:
This is a boon to the secret, demon-hunting government agency living in Sunnydale. Using infrared detectors, its operatives are able to locate a vampire moving among humans. Vampires, being dead, have a lower thermal output and thus show up exactly at the temperature of their environment, compared to a human's 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. So if one person in a crowded room registers at room tempterature, compared to surrounding hotter bodies, that person is most likely a vampire. "We got a cold one," one soldier says upon locating Spike with a similar device.So don't invite a vampire to ride with you, just so will be able to use the high-occupancy lane. The new infrared system will just see one occupant in your car and you will be pulled over.
If anyone is interested, here are several links to downloadable ebooks and manuals for using slide rules:
My only experience with using a slide rule was back in the 1960s in an 8th grade math class where we spent two weeks learning to use slide rules. We were just 8th graders, but were able to use a few basic features of something that was normally used mostly by scientists and engineers. Mr. Turner, our math instructor, even wore a small slide rule as a tie clasp. I suspect that the use of slide rules was something that probably was not normally taught to 8th graders.
Later on in Junior College, I once thought about possibly taking a 1 credit slide rule class, but didn't. That was in the days back before pocket calculators. In the College Algebra class our textbook had Log tables, a square root table and various other tables in the appendixes in the back which we used to get answers without a pocket calculator (or a slide rule).
I still have my dad's old Ivory and wood slide rule that he bought back in the 1950s and also a more modern plastic slide rule which I later purchased. I am plan to briefly brush up on how to use them just for the heck of it.
Computers vary quite a bit in how much power they use. My dual-core AMD-64 4200 is currently plugged into a Kill-A-Watt meter and according to the meter it is using 81 Watts at the moment. It occasionally uses much more power for short periods of time during heavy usage. The 20-inch LCD flat screen monitor was using an additional 38 Watts when I last checked. When the screen goes blank into the sleep mode the monitor's usage drops to only 1 Watt.The computer's video card is an AGP video card has the GeForce FX 5200 chip set and 256 MB of video RAM. It also has 2 GB of RAM and two hard drives with a total of 500 GB of hard disk space. The power supply is a 430 Watt power supply if I remember correctly.
I also have an AOpen mini-PC with a 1.83 GHz Core2 Duo that only uses about 23 Watts, not counting the monitor. The monitor uses about 38 Watts. It is the same monitor that I mentioned above. I use a KVM switch to control either computer with just one keyboard, monitor and mouse. The AOpen computer does not use much power because it has a motherboard and other components that are similar to what would be used in a laptop computer.
I have not yet bothered to measure how much power is used by other external components such as the DSL router, the UPS, the KVM switch, the speakers or the occasionally used external hard drive.
I am not a technician, but the use of an efficient 80-Plus power supply would also help save power. The 80 PLUS performance specification requires power supplies in computers and servers to be 80% or greater energy efficient at 20%, 50% and 100% of rated load.
What is 80 PLUS
I am no math expert, but am old enough to remember using a slide rule. Back in the mid-1960s, I was in a 8th grade math class where we were taught the basics of using a slide rule. Mr Turner, the math teacher even had a small slide-rule on his tie clip. Slide rules are now an obsolete technology that many younger people probably don't even know about. Inexpense pocket calculators have made them obsolete.
Later on I took a couple of Algebra courses in High School and later on at a Junior College. Instead of just using a pocket calculator, the back of the textbook had several large appendixes with tables for looking up the answers to logarithms, square roots and various other types of calculations. I was not like we could just use a pocket calculator to find the answer. If the exact number we were looking for was not in the table, we sometimes had to use interpelation to come up with an estimated answer based on the two nearest answers (not that I remember how to do that).
Back in the early 1970s (or late 1960s) I remember a cover of Popular Science Magazine with a headline about a pocket calculator for only about $800. Even more amazing was a another cover not too long after that with the headline about calculators for under $100. For $100 you could get a pocket calculator that could add, subtract, multiply and divide.
Here are a couple of slide rule links, although the link to the free book about using slide rules from Gutenberg.org, was down when I last tired it.
Slide Rule
Instruction for using a slide rule from Gutenberg.org or the alternate link to what appears to be the same book from Gutenberg Europe
I have run across several good documentary DVDs and video links that are critical of the Federal Reserve. I am not an expert and I have not yet heard from experts on both sides of the issue, so I have not drawn any final conclusions on the issue. What I have heard so far is quite thought provoking and gives me great concern for our financial future. In general I am slightly uncomfortable with conspiracy theories, so I am not sure what to believe. But, in my non-expert opinion, what they say about history and economics makes sense and is probably actually true.
Here are the books, DVDs and video links on the subject that I have run across so far:
Also closely related, but written back in 1899 well before the creation of the Federal Reserve is this book:
The Coming Battle
I hope to eventually find a more balanced, unbiased, two sided discussion of the subject by experts on both sides. So far I have only heard from the conspiracy theorists, because the mainstream press has never even mentioned the subject. I try to keep my mind open to what both sides might have to say about the subject. I would also like to hear what an actual economist has to say. Any good links for an opposing view?
By the way, I have not yet actually finished looking at all those DVDs and books yet, but the ones that I have seen were quite interesting. How do I decide what to believe and what not to believe with all this conspiracy stuff, especially when the mainstream press refuses to give an opposing viewpoint or even touch the subject.
For years, I would get those annoying DSL fliers in my telephone bills for DSL. Then I would call them and they would always say, "sorry, but DSL is not available where you live." I complained about constantly getting the DSL ads, so they did stop sending me the ads. DSL finally did became available here last Fall at 1.5Mbps download and 800K upload.
What also annoyed me, was having to watch all those TV commercials that would make disparaging comments about dial-up and would then say that I should get DSL or cable. They always made it sound like it was actually a choice for anyone.
Back in the late 1990s, there was a commercial about a poor deprived child with a tear in his eye, because he only had a 28.8K modem when all his friends had a 56K modem. Well, I had a 56K modem, but the local phone lines were only good for 26.4K. I did not even have the 28.8 speed that the poor deprived little boy was crying about. I finally now have DSL, but until recently, I would be sitting here on 26.4K dial-up and having to listen to all those TV commercials about cable or DSL.
I live on the edge of a smaller city in Northern Arizona and could only get 26.4K dial-up, up until last fall. The telephone company finally installed a new switch nearby and also 3 miles of new underground conduit. DSL finally then became available. Most people in town had cable, but I had not been able to get cable where I live. The telephone lines here were only good for 26.4K when using a 56K modem.
The DSL at my location is 1.5 Mbps download and 800 Kbps upload which I plenty for what I do.
Oops, I had not read the parent post very carefully. I did not notice that he was talking about slowness on a broadband connection. I have never had cable and don't know about that, but my DSL connection always seems to download files at exactly 161 KB/sec every time (except when the distant FTP server on the other end is slowed down from too many users).
Up until last fall, neither DSL or cable was not available where I live and all I had was a 26.4K dial-up connection when using a 56K modem. DSL finally became available last Fall after the telephone company installed a new switch nearby. They also dug a 3 mile long ditch with new conduit running to that building. I am now am happy to have a DSL connection with 1.5 Mbps download and 800 Kbps upload speed.
I live on the outer edge of a small city in the mountains of Northern Arizona. To compensate for the slowness of the 26.4K connection, I would try to have the next webpage being loaded in a new tab before I had finished reading the other webpage. That way it would not need to watch the webpage slowly being loaded. I also avoided wasting bandwidth by blocking as many ads as possible in the host file. Downloading large security updates or a really large file would sometimes take and hour more, but I did not sit there watching it download.
I use "Mike's Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file." With a modified hosts file, the advertising related URLs are blocked for both Internet Explorer and for Firefox. I use the modified hosts file on both my Windows computer and my Linux computer. It blocks known advertising related URLs by diverting them to the computers local loop back address at 127.0.0.1. I also download updated versions of his modified hosts file when they become available.
A few days ago, I was using Firefox on the Linux box while I was shopping for some amateur radio equipment. I went to a webpage and almost immediately, a rather agressive large advertisement appeared claiming that they had detected hundreds of links related to porn or spyware related links or something like that in my browser (I can't remember exactly what it said). The advertisement offered to clean my computer for free. I looked down at the bottom of the screen and saw a URL with drivecleaner in the name. I tried to close the advertisement from the upper right corner of the box, but it refused close. I then clicked the "No", but another box appeared saying something about possibly running or downloading a Windows program that ended with a .EXE extension. A box then appeared asking if I wanted to download and try to run the Windows program under Wine. I said no!
After that, I add them to the computer's hosts file with 127.0.0.1 in front of their name so that their attempts to connect to their URL will be diverted to my computer's loop back address. I then went back to the same web page, as a test, and their advertisement did not appear this time. I then went over to my Windows computer and also added that line to its hosts file too. On some routers that could also be blocked there too. Whoever they are, I don't want their ads or their attempted drive by downloads.
By the way, I also have the Konqueror browser on my Linux computer and it offers the option of having it tell other websites that I am using whatever version of Internet Explorer and Windows I want it to say. That will, more often than not, allow access to websites which try to block everyone that is not using Internet Explorer.
His new patent seems to be quite similar to what Katherine Albrecht had warned against back in October 2005 in the book "SPYCHIPS: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move." She not only warns us about business tracking us with RFID tags but also mentions to other related technologies such as shopper's ID cards. I can't recall if she specifically mentioned cell phones and GPS devices or not, but she definitely discusses the idea of "targeted advertising" and various related technologies. She had also founded Spychips.com and NoCards.org as opposition to that general type of thing.
Perhaps the inventor might have also seen a couple of the examples of tracking and "targeted advertising" that were in the movie "Minority Report."
Back before he supposedly invented the idea, I had already purchased an RFID blocking wallet and started leaving my cell phone behind in my truck, before entering shopping malls. That was to protect my privacy against his not yet invented new idea.
The article says that there is one wavelength that gets everybody. Perhaps criminals will soon probably be wearing special sunglasses or contact lenses with a special coating that totally blocks that particular frequency. The sunglasses might even block everything except for a narrow limited range of frequencies. If a criminal was not already wearing the special sunglasses he will probably be running with his eyes closed and swearing as he pulls them out of his pocket and puts them on.
However, if a policeman were to see someone walking around late at night wearing the special sunglasses, they might be inclined to ask a few questions. If they were to have a problem with anyone wearing sunglasses late at night they would probably also choose a different weapon.
I have a 13 inch television which I watch from a chair 12 feet away on the other side of the room. I doubt that I could see any benefit from using Blu-Ray instead of an ordinary DVD on the 13 inch TV from that distance.
The only larger screen that I have is the 20 inch LCD flatscreen on my computer (not a wide screen). I use larger screen on the computer, because, as I became middle-aged, I found that I needed reading glasses to see close up and the larger monitor helped greatly. However, watching TV on a 13 inch TV 12 feet away is still absolutely no problem and I am satisfied with that setup.
By the way, one advantage to becoming middle aged is that I can no longer hear that loud, annoying, high-pitched noise that I had to put up with for decades, coming from TVs and computer monitors in the 1960s through the 1980s or so. Most people could not hear the high-pitched frequency. I am not sure if new TVs still make the annoying high-pitched noise or not, since I can't here it anymore. Television manufacturers must not have cared about an annoying high-pitched noise that only a small percentage of their customers could here.
I get 6 channels from the electronically amplified rabbit ears antenna on my 13 inch TV. There are still no over-the-air HDTV channels being broadcast where I live and that will soon be a problem when they turn off the over-the-air analog broadcasts here is the U.S. in another year or two. I will then need to see if it is possible to get cable where I live, or if not, perhaps I will get a satellite dish or maybe just rent DVDs of movies and my favorite TV shows instead. I do not suppose you would describe me as an early adopter of new types of television and video technologies.
I actually have two external hard drives and the one that I had connected at that moment actually had FAT32 on the first partition. Somehow the JFS partition got slightly messed up, I may possibly have switched it off under Windows when it was not yet safe to do so (possibly). Since there wasn't anything important on either partition, I recreated the partitions just now and decided to use four partitions this time. The first is now a small NTFS partion, the second is a small EXT2 partion, the third is a huge JFS partition, and the fourth is a FAT32 partition.
As a test, just now, I switched back and forth several times between Windows and Linux and created or edited files on various partitions each time. I did not have any problems this time.
I also went ahead and used rsync again to start back of some of my files again onto the huge JFS partition. I plan to keep one of the external hard drives stored safely elsewhere just in case the building ever burns down or my computer ever gets stolen. The data is not real important since this is just a home computer, but I still believe in backing up stuff anyway.
I should add, that I actually only started using the external hard drive a few days ago. I have not yet chance to test the setup yet much. I had used it under Linux some, but had only tried it under Windows about once a day or so ago. When I tried going back and forth between operating systems just now, I experienced a slight problem with the JFS partition. Most likely, I will quickly get it solved and working properly. But anyway, this is not a setup that I have not tested much yet and did experience one problem just now. I just thought I should warn you.
The other stuff such as the KVM switch I have been using longer and that part seems to be working perfectly.
I have an external USB hard drive and recently formatted the hard drive with two different partitions. The first partition is formatted as NTFS and the second is formatted as JFS. The NTFS partition is mainly for Windows, but can also be used for transferring files between Linux and Windows. The JFS partition is only for being used by Linux. When using Linux, I can now make backup copies of stuff from my main Linux partitions onto the exteral drive's JFS partition using the rsync command. Perhaps I am being too paranoid, but I did not want Windows spyware or viruses to be able mess with what is backed up on that partition, so I deliberately chose something that Windows could not read. I use Kubuntu Linux and JFS is one of the several journaling file systems that it supports. I could have just as easily used some other Linux supported journaling file system such as EXT3 or ReiserFS, but for no special reason, I chose JFS. For the partition that Windows would use, I debated between NTFS and FAT32. I also toyed with the idea of formatting that partition as EXT2 and installing of of the several available open source drivers that would allow Windows XP to read EXT2. Linux is what I use 99% of the time and because it is my main operating system, I decided to make the JFS partition much larger and gave it 220 GB.
I have two different computers and use a KVM switch so that they can be controlled by just one keyboard, monitor and mouse. The two computers are side by side and one runs Linux and the other runs Windows XP. Most of the time I just use the Linux computer, but once in a while I turn on the Windows computer too and with the KVM switch can jump back and fort between either in about a second or two. The Windows computer is a small book sized computer that only uses 23 Watts, so I can occasionally run both at once without using much more electricity. I play around with Windows XP now and then, so that I do not totally forget to use and maintain a Windows computer.
I have the 250 GB hard drive in a NexStar GX external hard drive enclosure and it is connected to a manual 4-to-1 USB switch box. I then press the appropriate button on the manual USB Switch box to choose which computer the external hard drive is hooked to. For the first partion, I let Windows create the NTFS partion. I then used GParted running under Linux to create the JFS partition. By the way, I already had both the Ubuntu desktop package and the Kubuntu desktop package installed, so I was able to install GParted and run it under KDE, even though it is designed for Gnome.
Another alternative to all this would have been to run Samba on the Linux computer and just share a few folders at home over a wired or wireless Ethernet connection.
It sounds like he is a real life Buckaroo Banzai, like in the 1984 movie "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension." Buckaroo Banazi was a rock star, particle physicist, neurosurgeon, and race car driver. So, it really is possible to do all that! That was the movie where Earth was invaded by aliens flew around in space ships which looked like giant sea shells.
Buckaroo Banzai
Just to clarify one point that I just made, when I say that my older single-core socket-939 AMD-64 3800+ computer uses 94 Watts when it is idle, that does not include what the monitor uses. I did not have the monitor plugged into the meter
You mentioned power supplies that use 35W when the computer is off. Just for comparison, my Kill-A-Watt meter shows that when my computer is off it uses 11 Watts. It has a several year old, fanless 350 Watt power supply that Antec used to make, which was supposed to be more efficient (and expensive) than most power supplies. I also recently used the meter on another computer which has a fairly new 80 Plus power supply, which also happened to be made by Antec and it used 13 Watts when it was off.
The power supply in one of they two computers meets the new 80 Plus power supply specification. According to a web page about 80 Plus: "The 80 Plus performance specification requires power supplies in computers and servers to be 80% or greater energy efficient at 20%, 50% and 100% of rated load with a true power factor of 0.9 or greater."
Some of the newer CRTs may not be as bad as the older ones. As I mentioned elsewhere, I recently hooked the Kill-A-Watt meter to my 19-inch Philips 109B CRT monitor which I no longer use and found that is was only using 64 - 84 Watts depending on the color of the background. I also have a 20-inch LCD monitor, that I now use instead, which usually uses about 40-41 Watts. Today, when I measured it, it happened to only be using 35 - 37 Watts depending on background color, for some reason.
When my 1 1/2 year old AMD-64 3800+ computer is booting up it uses a peak of 159 Watts. Once it has booted up, the processor sees that it is not being asked to do much so it drops the clock speed from 2.4 GHz back to 1 GHz to save power and is then only using 94 Watts at that point. Kubuntu Linux automatically enabled that feature which AMD calls the Cool n' Quiet feature. When asked to do something more demanding the AMD-64 processor jumps back to 2.4 GHz for as long as necessary. I once used an earlier version of Slackware Linux which did not seem to support that feature on the default kernel that they used back then. If I am not mistaken, I believe that the Intel Core 2 Duo may also have some kind of somewhat similar power saving feature, but I am not totally sure. The number of hard drives, PCI cards, amount of memory and type of video card would also have some effect on how much power my computer uses.
I am not an expert or a technician, but that is what I got when measuring power usage at home, on my computers, with a Kill-A-Watt meter.
I also forgot to mention that on most days the 20-inch Dell 2007FP LCD flat screen monitor uses 40 Watts, which is slightly more that what I am measuring today. I don't know if the 1600 x 1200 resolution and whatever refresh rate that it uses affects things or not.
The 19-inch CRT that I mentioned in my post above, which I no longer use, is a 19-inch Philips 109B CRT monitor. I am mentioning that because, I just noticed other nearby posts about CRT monitors which use more power. Those might be older monitors. Perhaps, some of the newer CRTs may not be as bad about using power as they once were. I wonder if the refresh rate or resolution has any effect on a CRT's power consumption? I should try checking that sometime too.
I hooked up a Kill-A-Watt meter to my monitor again, just now, to see for myself if dark colors save power on my monitor. In the past, I had noticed that my 19 inch CRT monitor's power usage varied from 64 - 84 Watts depending on background color. With the CRT monitor, the dark color used about 20 Watts less. In the sleep mode, when the screen was blank it only used a little over 1 Watt.
My new monitor is a 20-inch Dell 2007FP flat panel LCD monitor which I will test right now. With Firefox running under Linux, I have Blackle.com open in one tab and Google.com open in another tab. Looking at the Kill-A-Watt meter, I get 35 Watts for Blackle.com and 37 Watts for Google.com. So using a dark color on my 20-inch Dell 2007FP flat panel monitor only saves 2 Watts. In the sleep mode, when the monitor goes blank, it only uses 1 Watt.
Oddly enough the power consumption on both my monitor and the rest of the computer varies from day to day by about 3 Watts. I am not sure if that is due to variations in room temperature or the daily variations in the voltage of the electricity that I get from the power company or what. At the moment the voltage here is 124.5 volts, sometimes it has been about 118 volts. The power company has come out twice, in the last decade or so, to adjusted the transformer on the nearby power pole to raise or lower the voltage.
So anyway, Blackle.com only saved 2 Watts on my 20-inch LCD flat panel monitor, which is not very much compared the the 100 Watt light bulb that is on in a nearby lamp. Just in case you had to ask, according to the Kill-A-Watt meter, the 100 Watt light bulb in one of the lamps is using 100 Watts and the 100 Watt light bulb in the other lamp is using 94 Watts. Switching to a more efficient type of light bulb would help much more than using Blackle.com.
Ooops, forget the part about having it play the messages back by Morse code. I forgot that I usually need to write down what I am receiving letter by letter and then read it back afterwards. If I brought paper and pencil on my hikes, I might as well bring my glasses too. So skip the CW playback idea. I did not take the time to think the problem through fully and that part of the idea was flawed. Sending by Morse code might still be good though.
Since I can't see the display without my reading glasses, it might also be nice to be able to convert the most recently received text message to Morse code and have it played to me. It could then play the most recently received message by pressing one of the two telegraph key shaped buttons which I could easily identify without my glasses. It could be kind of like the button on some answering machines, which plays the message again each time it is pressed. The other telegraph key shaped button would be of a different color and shape and would be used to initiate the entering of text by Morse code. Perhaps, selecting the recipient of the message could also be done without having to look at the display, if I have their telephone number or email address memorized. Before sending the message, I could have it play the phone number and message back to me by Morse code (at my usual preferred speed) so that I could verify that it is free of serious errors. Some people can send or receive Morse code fairly quickly.
None of my current friends or relatives use text messaging much, so at the moment I would not get a chance to use that feature as much as I might like. But anyway, that is my 2 cents worth on what I would like on my cell phone. Please skip all the other fancy features.