damn, am I fed-up with people pushing crap, either
the rote-learning-crap or
the "pimsleur don't work: because I haven't tried it but it's the same as all the others" crap.
Pimsleur.
Period.
IF you want to CONVERSE/THINK/FUNCTION in the language, AUTOMATICALLY,
at a level more-fundamental than having to think to engage it as a language,
then Pimsleur's the only way I know-of that GETS it:
It's based on the same mechanism that babies engage when learning language:
soundshapes & meaning, weaving 'em into one-another while learning 'em both, at-once.
Within a couple of lessons, if you accidentally hear some discussion in the language you're learning,
you'll experience the quite-surprising feeling of having your mind tracking it as a language
that is engaging your language-brain.
The difference is that quick-to-notice, and that-fundamental.
Rote-learning is for blockheadedness, and people who figure that doing some other route
( other than the one babies engage when learning language, our fundamental-est language-learning-circuit )
gets results faster, or at a more-automatic level, well, that's fine, but no adult *I*'ve ever heard-of learns as fast as a small child ( in language ),
and that particular circuit would seem to be difficult to beat. ..
Note that babies don't learn the basics of language by rote, or by anything-written, whatsoever.
Accept that the basic circuit is language, not written anything, and accepting that, dive-right-in, gaining the root dimension of it.
Or, go sabotage the swift progression into it to have a more-conventional progress that includes written stuff,
and try to ram that progress down to the fundamentallest-level, until you're functioning at an automatic-ish-level,
approximating the results you would have had by doing it the way nature wrote into your brain. . .
What idiocy. Get the "Instant Conversation" edition of Pimsleur for whatever language you care about
( that is the most-cost-effective edition they make -- about $50 US ),
and try it: if you NEED to function, and discover just how stunningly effective Pimsleur is, then go the whole-deal.
Playing-at learning language is for people who like playing-at it, and it must have its place, eh?
( the "playing-at" comment is only because the culture+pictures+context+etc play-games start at the second level of language, not at the first, and if you're trying to learn a language, beginning with step-two isn't the maximally-effective way of getting automatic-competence.
The Rosetta Stone isn't a brand I've tried, or maybe I have ( don't remember the name of the program it was, a friend who swore by it ), but the method misses the fundamental level's near-instinct-competence growing )
Cheers whichever choice you commit, and don't be surprised by the methods nature wrote into your brain being more effective than others, no matter how "nice" they are ( simply because nothing prepared me for how that having-my-language-brain track someone else's conversation felt, after only, 3 or so lessons ).
R-Mind mode ( right-brain-hemisphere dominant mode ) drives the entire brain/central-nervous-system differently, and more wholely.
One of the books on "my" registry ( which is books I recommend to others, because they undo specific dysfunctions hammered into us
. . and that "registry" has no address attached to it, so it CANNOT be used to boost "me" ) is:
The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain ( Betty Edwards PhD )
Most people can work-through ( merely-reading does NOT gain the result. ) the thing, if pushing it, in 5 days.
It took me years, because
a) the psychic experience of being less-left-brain-polarized made me want to scream
b) I'm a bit braindamaged ( look in the "autistic" direction, and get a telescope )
HAVING experienced the difference between L-Mind and R-Mind, and having considered the differences between
R-Mind cultures ( awareness, wholeness, ideogram, equality, drumming, earth/mother, etc. ), and
L-Mind cultures ( rote/rules, mechanism, atomic-sequential languages, inequality, trumpets/strings, sky-gods, etc. )
it's part of a DEEP ( and possibly periodic ) tide-shift among humanity's mind/knowing, and it is choosable, among us now, as individuals.
We got 2 modes available to us ( L-Mind & R-Mind ), and each gets us some advantages
( cutting/logic/technology/specialization
vs
totality/wholeness/harmony/all-at-onceness )
and anyone who develops R-Mind has a significant advantage ( consider the weird advantage of the aikido-masters, gained over decades. ..
consider that what they're doing is indirectly developing R-Mind. )
Why The Hell Not Directly Train R-Mind and gain the advantages?
Miyamoto Musashi, Leonardo DaVinci, and Winston Churchill all painted
( all got VERY-FAR into R-Mind ), and all were considered THE exemplar of their kind/field
the Magic Dismissal "Mere Coincidence!" is one that looks thin when seeing just how execptional these ones were, but
once one has experienced the shift itself, and experienced the consequences of it, then
the Magic Dismissal becomes a known Strident Lie.
Anyways, try it, and you can gain the advantages of it yourself, & those advantages extend to one's body-awareness and body-health.
Do Astanga yoga in R-Mind, sometime, and you'll understand just why "ninjutsu" is a branch of buddhism,
& not a branch of shogun/samurai-establishmentism.
. ..
PS: the Pattern, of human hemisphere-dominance, is shown partly in writing-systems, partly in musical-instrument-choice, and musical-participation ( segregated-musicians is L-Mind determination ), partly in rights, partly in harmony, partly in "art" painting/depiction, etc.
the pieces of the Pattern are visible throughout history, and if you start digging/watching, you'll find it's bloody obvious.
"Age of Light" may well end-up being known as "Age of False Light", when the difference between inner-light, inspiration, and mechanical-light, or specialization-expression, become noticed, but for everyone who doesn't see the Pattern, just ignore it, don't try the alternative mode of knowing, and THEN its non-existence among your mind proves it Does Not Exist, right?
-laughing-
Try it, anyways: scientific method is based on falsification, and if you experience right-brain-dominant-mode mind, and do NOT experience any different central-nervous-system-mode, then I'd be absolutely astonished
I would have written at-least an online minibook for The GIMP
( How To, for photographers who care just to get good-enough-for-results results... ), except that:
a) The GIMP ( or its development ) won't ever be end-user or end-power-user responsive, and
b) The GIMP won't ever support efficient workflow, and
c) The GIMP won't ever support efficient & effective colour-calibration
( at-least not until EVERYone else has done it for sooo long that it finally becomes acceptable for it to do so )
d) The GIMP won't ever support all the plugins for photoshop, even though it HAS to be possible to code an app for that sort of compatibility
( since Jasc's program did. . . )
e) The GIMP won't EVER have a wonderful-to-work-with UI ( or even a usable one )
etc.
It's a variation of The Debian Syndrome:
User-centrism, and USE-centrism
. . oppose ..
institutional-mentality or institutional-modality,
& mutex is mutex ( mutually-exclusive ).
KOffice's Krita is designed to displace The GIMP, and it's going v1.5 rc1 at the end of February 2006,
so simply ditch The GIMP and have-at something designed with function as a centre of it
( not necessarily THE centre of it, mind.. KOffice's spreadsheet is unfortunately insane, so function can't possibly be the centre of that,
& that mind-set may be contaminating the rest of KOffice. . . )
The sanest thing to do, it seems, it to let The GIMP be authoritative(tm), and institutional(tm), and to Let It Die(tm)
while replacing it with something that is usable & works.
The market moves-on, right?
( just as Linux is displacing other OSs from many markets, and most/all servers )
PS this isn't an attack against The GIMP, or The GIMP's developers, it's simply a user-perspective, developed over YEARS of attempting to find OPEN-evolution in The GIMP, and the final & certain recognition/identification of What Happened.
And, having seen equivalent happen in countless different ways, throughout our world, from the Kremlin to Washington+NSA+HomelandSec++ to RIAA to Hospitals to every kind of institution/entity:
it's the basic perception that Agile is opposite to the RELIGION of establishment,
& establishment is an unconscious religion, is all. ..
Fighting the undertow of the river we all splash-around on requires coherent determination, and how many "groups" or "teams" have coherent-determination that is contradictory of the undertow owning them? Eh?
Percentage-wise, it's 0.00% or something?
'The 30 MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES of the US Marines' ( Freedman ) is a book that showed how to attack, at an organizational level, that same institutional-inertia-mode,
but Who Honestly Cares either about their life-quality, their work, their family/workgroup/community, or anything, ENOUGH to commit different-mode, coherently, consistently, ongoingly?
Anyone?
PPS: the "registry" link of this post has a link to the Freedman book, and some other good ones, and you can read others comments of the books on the amazon.com pages for each of 'em, so you don't have to trust my opinion of 'em at all, and no there isn't any address attached to that "registry" so its a For YOUR Information, only, registry, see. ..
Think of the beauty of the Corporate-Ignoring Enforcement, though, the inevitable consequence. ..
"even the worm will turn"
Abuse some population enough, and they'll start getting.. not just ornery, but ornery+organized+momentum+growing, and then Problems(tm) begin. ..
IF The Industry Association/Authority has determined to be as obnoxious as this looks, AND people usually "justify" contributing to abuse by identifying with "authority", but that "justification" breaks-down now, because the abuse is too pervasive and too obviously non-necessary, then the backlash is going to take-root among non-geeks, and that backlash-growing is going to change attitudes among a few lawmakers, among a few politicos, among a number of campaigns that happen to value not being stampeded-on or lynched ( though I fully expect some mass-media to snow-under intelligent though/discussion, in order to make conforming-believing. . . )
Ignorance-enforcement's action/reaction is sometimes poetically beautiful in the unfolding of its obliteration-of- its-own-worth, if nothing else. ..
Also, it's pretty hard to not laugh at the idiots who think they're getting Real Good Historical Position in enforcing such ignorance/abuse, as the inevitable backlash is going to rip their comfy importance right out from their make-believe history/reality. ..
I hear there was a film about the '80's called Barbarians At The Gate that showed the shallowness of self-important-greed, as glorified by Our Marvelous Creation/System. ..
Would anyone who pushes such arrangement really want to be ridiculed or ignored for eternity because of their contribution? Or would that be horrendous to the kinds-of-person more likely to be committing these arrangements against everyone?
It's all comical and pathetic and stupid, simultaneously.
IF only indie films are going to be viewable in high-res, freely, then Guess What, dumbass **AA moronity: indie-video IS GOING TO INCREASE AND DISPLACE YOUR MARKETSHARE, BECAUSE YOU FORCED THE MARKET TO CHANGE THAT WAY, and it is simple, and it is poetically funny. ..
_Authority_ assumes _IT_ is the only-god, and doesn't "get" what happened when mp3's made a new market, and unmade an old-one: what the hell makes anyone think The Great God Authority can think now, when it couldn't today or yesterday, never did, and never bloody will?
Forcing everyone's expensive/new entertainment system to be non-usable for Hollywood stuff manufactures grudge against Hollywood ( and the owned/collared legislators/lapdogs ),
and one simple, clear and unblockable way for that grudge to express ( positively, in this-one's opinion ) is simply to create ALTERNATIVE content, to get LOTS of someones creating alternative content, and to compete against **AA monopoly in its entirety.
Dig the books on plot, on indie film-making, on videography, on lighting ( there's one . . Prescription for Better Videos, or something, on the amazon.com "registry" I made for everyone else: books I recommend generally, and WHY. . it's a very nice little book covering the basic basics, written by a TV/News cameraman. . hm, I misplaced my copy, here, didn't I. . . )
Search on amazon.com for each aspect of the kind of videography YOU want/care-about, sort the results of that search by Customer Rating,
and nail each dimension of it yourself ( working on one single knowing at a time, to get steady progress, rather-than sabotaged "progress"! ),
and PUT THE WORK OUT THERE, and the cartel won't be able to stomp-out all creativity ( Ogg Vorbis has a video-equivalent, I gather: Ogg Theora or something ),
and the more one does stuff, the better one gets, right?
Consider the alternative: to be stopped-up, unable to speak, unable to communicate, to only know what we're told to know, to have our minds and spirits obliterated or die?
What happened, we stopped living/thinking a century or two ago?
Firstly, I'd been under the impression that some galaxies behaved differently ( because the "dark matter" had been stripped out from them, or otherwise relocated, or something, in intergalaxy-collision ), and this was part of the validation of the "dark matter" idea, AND
Why in hell does everyone call it Dark Matter, when it is Dark Mass, but with n-1.. 1 ( or 0? ) dimensional branes ( assuming n dimensions ), rather than "particles", so the term "matter" builds assumptions that enbogify our understanding from the get-go?
Child Onset Schizophrenia is the culmination of
1. being born with bits-of-brain missing, and
2. having one's brain-structure different thereby, and
3. having one's braincell structure different ( different kind of alpha-7 nicotinic-receptors, wrong number of dopamine receptors, something profoundly monkeyed with the glial cell line derived neurotrophic factor, and probably with the glial cells theirselves, etc. ), and
4. having a significant portion of one's brain ( 1/10th?. . . starting in parietal-tissue ) slaughtered ( programmed-cell-death ) off, taking about 5 years ( in one's teens ), and doing greater ( visual centres ) or lesser amounts of decimation, then. ..
What happens when someone who is already experiencing this, gets their central nervous-system distorted by LSD or equiv?
Catastrophic failure to deal-with reality? Failure to balance? Slaughter of some bystander because they were rigged and could not stand against the combined-force of their inherent-defectiveness and the drugs?
There's a difference between pushing against the side of a solidly centered/balanced boat, and pushing-against a lopsided, explosive-laden, misconfigured boat, eh?
Jeff Duntemann called Eiffel "ada done right", and he's a guy I trust for knowing what he's talking about ( my first "it works for me" assembler book was wrotened by 'im ), and he found the programming-by-contract paradigm and the.. sorry, but the concept-shape in my memory translates as "sustainable-correctness".. of it to be worth-getting, and what I know about Erlang could be printed on the period at the middle of this sentence ( yes I've just glanced at erlang.org's beginner-stuff ), so I'm asking you which should I learn, for what process-reasons, for what problem-domain-reasons, in essence why would you recommend Eiffel over Erlang, and why would you recommend Erlang over Eiffel ( I want to get your sense of where each is better, since you've very-seriously considered Erlang, see )?
I'd decided, already, to standardize me on Ruby ( agility & clarity ), Eiffel ( for high-integrity infrastructure that needs to be compiled rather-than scripted ), possibly OCaml ( just because what I've read of-it indicates it's good for engineering type problems ), and possibly Pliant ( No Weak Points, rather-than good-for one particular kind of problem/domain or kind-of-thinking. . . )
I want at-most 4 languages, orthogonal to each other ( enough ), to clarify my mind, so I'm concentrating on the problem-solution rather-than wrestling-with arbitrary or bizarre language curlicues, and therefore have much-greater probability of rooting-out the problems, wrong-assumptions, wrong-paradigms, etc, as compared-with ones who are caught in lower-level-thinking, or being "caught in the groove" of the technology, if you see what I mean. ..
This is sorta like my decision to standardize on English, Japanese, Arabic, and UML2, since one is structural-implication, one is indirectness, one is emotion, and one is schematic, and if one's mind is in the habit of knowing in these four profoundly-different kinds of ways ( and in not being raptured by roccoco detail ), then one isn't very likely to be thrown by some problem-assumption as others are, eh?
( FYI, I'd be using http://www.pimsleur.com/ language-training for the human-language stuff, since I've already experienced how it blows-away the conventional competition, for effectiveness in training/learning. . . they're awesomely good, in how well they work. . . )
That link has its "previous-history" tracking information ripped-out, BTW
The amazon.com "registry" link of this post has other books of similar excellence listed, as well as why I'm recommending 'em ( no address is attached to it, so no-one can buy 'em for me via the thing, it's posted there for everyone's information ),
but the book you NEED is Richard Stutely's.
I'd also recommend "Thinking Visually" and "The Power of the 2x2 Matrix", but immediate-need means I'm posting this now, not after working-over additions for hours. Cheerses, eh?
For years hard-drives have relied on Partial Response / Maximum Likelyhood
reading of data from the magnetic "bits"
( I think there are 20+ bits with the ECC, for every "byte" given to the outside world,
but don't know if that's before filesystem or not ), and
magnetic bits do oppose each other ( or pull each-other ), & aren't immutable, & if you've ever tried reading data from old data-tapes
or old diskettes/floppies, then you know that bit-rot exists.
( also lost data in cheap CDRs/DVD-Rs -> use CD-RWs/DVD+RWs
because they record in metal, not in organic-dye )
~magnetic tape has held music without loss for decades~
bullshit on that, unfortunately. ..
Remember the bit about ALL the master-tapes in the studios ( except BASF, IIRC )
having to be dehydrated+transcribed onto other tapes, because they hadn't
been stored in dry-storage, and the magnetic ~emulsion~ ( or whatever it's called ) on
the polyester-film had absorbed moisture from the air,
and so "playing" the reel of tape wiped-OFF the magnetic material?
Does anyone here consider
Sounds Like It Did Last Time I Heard It Years Ago == Digitally Identical?
In the lower frequencies it takes, what, 10% or 20% distortion to be audible?
Does a 10% loss of one's compressed-archive seem like a recoverable position with no legal liabilities?
I'd
1. record on RAID5 or RAID6
2. fsck annually, just to wake up the drive & check if it's OK
3. transfer the files from one drive to another ( N archive-drives == N+1 drives needed, therefore ) biannually,
because then the data'd be "freshly" imprinted in the medium, and so the magnetic bits wouldn't have faded/moved much
4. make DAMN certain I'm using S.M.A.R.T. on every drive, always, and am actively monitoring the things
5. get some plastics company, or wasn't there some company with a name like Turtle or something? . . to
make "toolbox" cases for the things, or get Pellican cases for 'em ( waterproof ) or
some equivalent aluminum armoured cases for batches of 'em
6. one can send the freed ( 2yo or 4yo ) drives into the desktops, making everyone happier
The beauty of this is that one can continue migrating the data onto bigger and bigger drives,
so the physical storage issues are suppressed
( which may be an issue, if one is storing the critical-stuff in a bank safe deposit box ).
For more information on data-loss in magnetic media, try digging 'round in the pro-audio usenet discussions, over those DATs.
Also, I hear MiniDV has some issues.
But for immediate verification, just listen to your own tapes, listening for "pre-echo" in 'em, and
you've right there definite infidelity to what they recorded originally.
It's easy to see, when you transcribe your audio-tapes into a sound-editor,
& can get a reel (: no pun intended ) good look at the accuracy of magnetic recording. ..
Western paradigm ( everything is monetary-equivalent-object ) vs
Eastbloc paradigm ( everything really is only object ) versus
non-Confusian Asian paradigms ( everything is relationship, relationship is reality )
hasn't anything to do with the ebb and flow of totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism is a more-fundamental level.
Sorta like there are 2 ( or more ) dimensions of our reality, and we insist that the superficial-level is the only-level while enforcing the change we "oppose" at the fundamentaller level.
Which is exactly what happens when someone is heavily addicted to alcohol, ferinstance, and concentrates on pouring measuredly, in order to not drink too much ( per minute ), while ignoring that it's owning them, & they're obliterating their life.
'Tis simply the 2 Problem Problem in action. ..
Whenever solving The Problem doesn't solve The Problem,
there's probably 2 different problems involved, and one simply isn't getting a high-enough or abstract-enough perspective to see how one is being shucked'n'jived by the dissonance, is all. ..
They got 3 watt white LEDs over at http://www.luxeonstar.com/, brighter than damn near anything comparable ( certainly brighter than any off-the-shelf LED I could find in me normaller electronics-shop ), efficienter than normal incandescent, 100k hours lifespan, they got lenses for the things ( I'm using a wide-angle for the immediate-ground light and an elliptical for the "high-beam" light in my 2-LED bike-light. . . that puts-out up-to 160 lumens, in stepped levels, and runs around 1.5h on 8 Ni-MH AA's, gotta mount the LEDs solidly onto heatsinks, though, so I'm using a big aluminum-case as a heatsink, and epoxying the things solidly on, with a copper-wedge to angle the "high-beam" up a bit & the wide-beam down a bit. . . )
Really read the technical stuff for heat-sinking 'em, as some of the stuff, like a single LED on a HUUUGE heatsink indicates these suckers need special treatment. . . and the special-power-supplys for 'em make some things interesting, like dimming the LEDs. . . constant-voltage, variable current, it seems. ..
Also, watch-out for the life-span: the 5 watt white ones, in the "portable" section, have only 500 hours life, avg, and there aren't any ( at the present ) 5 watt white normal ones, so the III's are the brightest long-life whites you can get from them, anyways. ..
Digikey.com, of course, for the rest of the stuff: the weather-sealed switches, the potentiometers for making the multiple levels of output for the power-supply, the not-electrolytic thank-you-very-much tantalum 220uf capacitor for power input stabilization, the sealed aluminum case to build the suckers onto. . . great fun
And I WISH someone was making a 2-head lamp with these things commercially, but no, that ain't the case, so Gerry-rigging it is the only way to go
Disclaimer, I'm just some average-joe, making me a bike-light because no-one produces 'em the way I want 'em, not affiliated with anyone, and all that. . .
and they've got conversion-units, if you want to convert your normal-incandescent-flashlight to an LED unit, BTW, costly bastards, though. . .
Agriculture remained, by-and-large, among the ones formed into it while growing-up, and if some agrarian population mixed geographically with some nomadic population, agriculture didn't take-over the nomads, the nomads just didn't establish+amplify their population, is all. ..
Moveable Type, Gutenberg's inventation, changed Humanity's process by to-great-degree democratizing publishing ( and therefore knowing ), and by changing-the-rules of perceiving/learning:
before then most were among
the Lower Tier of
the Two-Tiered Level-Playing-Field(tm), and that invention changed our rules. ..
Anytime humanity's process changes, due to technology, it changes what ( portion/aspect ) of humanity survives now,
( though it may shorten our race's survival, since evolution doesn't think-ahead. . . )
highspeed internet, microwave ovens, "IM" ( though IRC seems to be better at knowledge-growing, and IM seems to be social-addiction in lieu of knowledge-growing ), the cellphone, websites reachable by anyone ( who isn't beneath Authoritarian Rule, and can afford the computer+electricity+access ). ..
These things change whom we interact-with, change how we interact, and therefore change the population that results, or is, next generation.
They also change our mind's forming, so that a brainscan of a young-person who's experiencing some particular instance of event won't experience it with the same kind-of brain-energy-pattern/shaping as what an old bastard like I would. ..
Which means that different human-potential manifestly-is, after-the-change. ..
Some schools of communications use video of that brain-scan-difference to hammer-home how
Making One's Work For One's Audience is something that cannot be based on the assumption
"They're All Like Me":
that one, IF one wants to communicate with a differently-formed group, has to understand their mode. ..
Marshal McLuhan's "The Medium Is The mAssage" was all about how electric technology changed US from river/story to modular/plugin mode.
( strange-capitalization is mine, spelling was HIS:
the bogo-meme that displaced what he said is pushed by
Mass Mindlessness, or MassMedia(tm), but
THINK, and DEMAND thinking, and one CAN gain,
in one's own evolving, damnit! )
PS: that "registry"-link is books I recommend to everyone, not "get 'em for me" ( you couldn't anyways: there's no address associated with that "registry" ). If you value using your remaining-life to make your-worth be your substance, actively, then consider 'em,
and if you consider any to be better, then tell me about 'em, please!
You can post a reply to any message of mine here on/. and I'll be notified 'bout it, which does-away-with spam-friendly e-mail. ..
And thanks in advance to any who clue-me-in to better/greater leverage, eh?
These meets your CPU speed, but not your RAM reqs,
and they've a number of similar such things, including complete "waysmall"s,
but if you need that much RAM, instead of flash-storage, then mini-ITX is your only hope. ..
I suspect that the thing they did was similar to what IBM did when they went after Kasparov the second-time:
They've got a complexer algorithm ( algorithm whose components are algorithms, of drastically-differently feeling kinds-of-'em ) that is sooo-much more effective, that it can run on significantly-lesser hardware than what would require itself if using the more-established algorithms.
Therefore I'm wondering if anyone has modularized the algorithms for mix-and-match to make more-autonomous machine-minds? ( in an opensource-way. . . )
a) asserting that my telling the OP to get a good surge-suppresor means they are going to get a worthless one, therefore
b) I should have recommended a cheap UPS to protect them against brownouts. . . isn't getting that
c) cheap UPSes don't protect against brownouts/sags, only line-interactive and double-conversion ones do. AND
d) if they wouldn't get a good surge-suppressor, what in hell makes me think they're going to get a real UPS, anyways?
I was wrong to not-think of the UPS.
Period.
But, if you're going to get one, get a line-interactive one, for your system's sake.
Quite simply, every investment you make is an investment in your capability
Safe a few dollars on the tools, but then your work-capability is harmed. . . better-for-you??
Not.
Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the US Marines says it better than I do, but if you figure the marines are wrong, when they die when they err, well-and-good, but then we differ in understanding non-reconcilably, and that's fine, of course. ..
That "Amazon Registry" link of mine isn't for me, it's for you people:
you can click on the books and read others' reviews of 'em, and choose your-own-self how you feel about the meanings in 'em.
The Marines Managemnet-Principles book by David H. Freedman that I recommend to most everyone is on that list, so you can get your sense-of-it through there, and
no, no-one can buy me anything though that list: I've got no address on it to prevent that. ..
Cheers, people
The world in no way revolves around parasitic "consumer" thingies, the world revolves around the entities that are =
( leverage * magnitude )
and assume "leverage" to be significantly-coincident-with "money". ..
and they make the rules tilt the world more to centring on them.
This is the "nucular family" paradigm, transposed-up, is all.
The non-core entities simply aren't valid in any way that can make the future-result respect their worth/heart/meaning.
There isn't any malice or anything in it, it's simply sentient-entropy eradicating diversity/complexity/vitality in its processing. ..
Geeks churn, most normal-people don't.
( this referring to the frequency of replacing one's machines )
That the OPer is totally out-of-the-loop on modern sockets etc. indicates that they AREN'T going to replace the machine every 2 years,
therefore their making this machine an investment rather than a 2-year-lease-equivalent
( transposed from cars, where people are rationaller, to computers where people aren't ),
seems sane.
The OP began with "It's been a few years since I built my current system by. ..",
and I trusted that to be fact, not deliberately-manufactured red-herring, is all. ..
-shrug-
Sometimes "penny wise, and pound-foolish"
is true.
( translation for non-Brits: "cents-wise, dollars-stupid" )
Also, the OP didn't ask to tell them what was right for them ( and I didn't attempt to assume that ),
it asked if there was a guide, so I showed 'em how one person makes such choices, as an instance-of-guide,
and pointed out a couple of good, and trustworthy, information-sites, fully expecting others to give contradictory information,
so the OPer could then make-up their own mind more-informedly. ..
Others' total-reliance on Toms Hardware makes me shudder, as ThePabster's bias
( apparently induced by love of their bigger advertisers ) I gave-up arguing-with years-ago. ..
( remember Van Smith's site? the one that abused pay-by-the-byte netters by its force-refresh? but that cut through distortive BS with an integrity that was really worth fighting-for? they, IIRC, and others, cut through that fundamental-bias to show its distortion ). ..
"I don't know that a spike can't happen through cable or DSL, but in 7 years I've never seen it happen and your provider has much more expensive equipment than you do, so I would expect plenty of isolation. An oversize UPS would be a better use of the money."
Lightning Happens.
Lightning means wires between Your Home(tm) and Elsewhere(tm) pick-up energy.
Energy goes somewhere.
IF that somewhere happens to involve your computer, it's likely killed or damaged, unless protected.
( notice that MOST comuter-users only complain about malware when they are no-longer able to USE their computer due to it!
protection/proactive-defense ISN'T normal, so I'm trying to recommend action that gets committed protecting their machine, see )
It doesn't matter how well the other-end of the wire is protected, if
the easiest-path for the electricity to discharge is through your machine.
( and the energy in the nearest-mile finds that your-machine is the short-cut )
An oversize UPS is an investment I wish all computer-users made, but I'm trying to be realistic:
it's better to have protection against having one's machine killed than to have none.
OPer, GET a line-interactive UPS, and rely-on-it.
If you live among a power-nasty grid, then get a Zero Surge to protect ALL your expensive electronics, simply because they're the only ones who don't rely-on fade-in-use MOVs. Allied Electronics sells 'em ( as do others, check http://froogle.google.com/ )
It is even-better to protect one's data from corruption or loss
( therefore both line-interactive UPS -- power-sags are the bigger data-loss means than are outright blackouts -- and backups are necessary if one REQUIRES one's work ), but I'm not holding my breath for that among normals. ..
I didn't bother recommending a DVD-RW burner, but that'd be a requirement if backups are needing to be archival, too
( just concerning meself with the core stuff, since that seemed to b
IF one knows that one wants a machine that will run "new" release programs in 3 years, that means AMD64, rather than 32-bit
( compatibility-problems, as-in programs simply not running, have been found on the Intel implimentation of x86_64 )
That cuts down the field greatly.
THEN, one looks at whether the thing is guaranteed to be wordprocessing-only
( or equivalent non-taxing, ie NO multimedia-rendering or vid-conferencing, ferinstance ),
and one can sanely go with single-channel-RAM ( socket 754 ),
rather-than dual-channel-RAM ( socket-939 or socket-940 )
THEN once looks at what kind of expandibility one may need, later. ..
Video-card?
No-longer does AGP count ( they aren't making top-end ones anymore, and soon won't be making middle-of-the-road ones, either! ),
so one requires PCIe ( PCI-Express ) 16x on the motherboard.
Does one want to be forced to find a firewire-card to add-in later? or does one want everything built-in?
Does one want the ability to add-in PCIe add-in cards for, say, high-end-audio, or for video-capture, or for ANYTHING?
one needs PCIe slots, then, too ( PCI is going the way of the dodo )
All in all, the one mobo I know-of, that at-the-moment covers it ( including a 4x PCIe slot, for later! ),
is by MSI http://www.msicomputer.com/index2.asp
Unfortunately, it's got a fan on the chipset,
so it's an on-when-one-uses-it cheap workstation-board,
rather-than an always-on everything-server-board
( fans die after however many running-hours they happen to survive )
Right, that's the mobo, howabout the CPU?
syncronous-with-the-RAM is a good rule
IF the mobo can deal-with PC3200 RAM ( these 2 can ), then that means the RAM's communicating-speed is 400MHz ( rather-than, say, 333MHz )
Since there isn't any valid thing as 1/3 of a wait-cycle ( it's either 0 or it's 1, with computers ), I want the CPU's actual physical speed to be a multiple of that, like say 2000MHz.
That gets the speed, so what choices are there?
cheap, and I wasn't able to get-one, is the
SDA3400DIO28W Sempron 3400+ Socket 939 ( the "3400+" is the approximate equivalent in Intel-speed, known-as its "rating" )
More expensive, and having more on-chip cache-memory, is the
2.0 GHz 939-pin Athlon 64 3200+
Ultimate capability would-be the X2 chip ( 2 Athlon64 cores in one chip, so when one program is swamping one core, the system still responds ) http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInforma tion/0,,30_118_9485_13041%5E13076,00.html
shows that cheapest multiple-of-400MHz X2 chip is the "3800+" and the highest-end is 2.4GHz "4800+"
Hit http://www.pricewatch.com/ to discover what sane-prices are for the things, but be sitting-down when you see the highest-end ones. ..
Case? Aluminum. That keeps hard-drives cooler ( whole case acts like a nice-big heatsink ).
Make decorations for it using pipecleaners & a hot-melt-glue gun, if you want. . . : )
Video-card?
IF you want quiet, go for ATI rather-than NVidia ( fan-speed, I'm talking about, here ),
and if you want cheap, grab some X300 or something,
the higher-end cards the X800 XL is a very good bu
RW discs:
*blanking aneals metal-layer in disc
*burning quick-melts spots of metal in disc, so they freeze quickly to different crystallization than the annealed "normal"
*reading means reading the changes in reflectivity that occur ( or differences in polarization, in magneto-optical, IIRC ) in the METAL reflecting the laser-beam.
Write Once discs:
*new disc is "blank"
*laser "burns" organic-dye in writing,
*reading-laser "sees" the diff between burnt and non-burnt as less-transparent vs more-transparent, and the reflective-layer behind-it means that this is usable binary encoding. . . ( beam goes through organic-dye twice and then is read, or perhaps gets-eaten by the burnt dye and then its absence is read. . . )
*organic-dye decays
IF you care about archival, you then store complete versions of your files,
with checksums and ECC on RW discs.
IF you are using organic-dye write-once discs, then you are basing your ability-to-recover your stuff based on Estimates & Marketing Claims(tm)...
This works by training one's brain the way babies learn the bits of language: individual-sounds, sylables, and associating meaning with sound-forms in one's automatic words brain/mind.
Not the industrial-era gigo+roteLearning "training" that is usual in language-"education".
Then it is perhaps utterly obvious that it ISN'T death-on-citizens ( all nationalities ) that is offensive against Authoritarian-assumption, but rather threat-against anyone whose importance-assuming is in "Authority"?
( note that when someone's pushing for obliteration of individual-rights, they're usually assuming they are belonging-among Authority, though they'll scream when it stomps *them*. Unconscious-mind thinks drunk. . . )
100x as-many Americans slaughtered by collisions is MUNDANE, and therefore isn't threat-against-Authority. .
Whereas. . .
Priorities, people, and don't pretend *actuality* interferes with enforcing-obedience/conforming-making. . .
for that isn't true: actuality simply doesn't, nor has it any-right to, according-to unconscious assumption. . .
: \
( no, this isn't attacking any group, it's attacking unconscious-mind, a substance this-one has fought among oneself . . lots and lots. somewhat winning, now. . . )
You want the AdBlock Extension to Firefox ( it may take several re-loads to get that page loaded ).
Don't like a particular kind of something that appeared in yer browsing?
Either
a) click on the AdBlock thingy in the right-end of the status-bar, and you get a window displaying all the blockable elements, or
b) right-click on the element-to-block itself, and AdBlock it.
One of the first I do is create an item "*.swf", which eats all shockwave/flash from my browsing ( it can be set to remove elements from before Firefox gets to see 'em ). It renders some sites non-viewable, but since those sites won't-allow blind-users access to their product/service, they don't need me either, do they?
( should I subsidize corps(es) that oppose the inclusion of older friends/relatives? or eyeball-injured people? )
Why not just remove the shockwave player plugin? Because sometimes, I have to have swf support ( some fsckhead provider of something I have to get access to, for whatever reason, like support on some product I'm stuck working-with ) and it's easier to temporarily remove that AdBlock item than it is to download/install/update the swf rpm.
Then I go hunting for bad ones, hitting more popular sites and seeing what one can eradicate from 'em. . . building-up a good collection of the things. ..
http://ads.*.* is another./recip/ is another, since it seems to usually-be a big reciprocal-google-bombing arrangement.
Lots of ways to get AdBlocker to eat stuff that is bad.
Being back in linux ( yayyyy! ) I'm finding that I really wish the extension worked with Konqueror, but probably I'll just copy-out the domain-names from AdBlock and put 'em into a hosts file with addresses of 0.0.0.0. More bother to do, but it'll kill 'em for Konq & everything else, too.
Some people use some of the anti-sleaze 'hosts' files kicking 'round on the 'net, instead-of, or as-well-as, this
Slashdot Mirror
damn, am I fed-up with people pushing crap, either
the rote-learning-crap or
the "pimsleur don't work: because I haven't tried it but it's the same as all the others" crap.
Pimsleur.
Period.
IF you want to CONVERSE/THINK/FUNCTION in the language, AUTOMATICALLY,
at a level more-fundamental than having to think to engage it as a language,
then Pimsleur's the only way I know-of that GETS it:
It's based on the same mechanism that babies engage when learning language:
soundshapes & meaning, weaving 'em into one-another while learning 'em both, at-once.
Within a couple of lessons, if you accidentally hear some discussion in the language you're learning,
you'll experience the quite-surprising feeling of having your mind tracking it as a language
that is engaging your language-brain.
The difference is that quick-to-notice, and that-fundamental.
Rote-learning is for blockheadedness, and people who figure that doing some other route .
( other than the one babies engage when learning language, our fundamental-est language-learning-circuit )
gets results faster, or at a more-automatic level, well, that's fine, but no adult *I*'ve ever heard-of learns as fast as a small child ( in language ),
and that particular circuit would seem to be difficult to beat. .
Note that babies don't learn the basics of language by rote, or by anything-written, whatsoever.
Accept that the basic circuit is language, not written anything, and accepting that, dive-right-in, gaining the root dimension of it.
Or, go sabotage the swift progression into it to have a more-conventional progress that includes written stuff,
and try to ram that progress down to the fundamentallest-level, until you're functioning at an automatic-ish-level,
approximating the results you would have had by doing it the way nature wrote into your brain. . .
What idiocy. Get the "Instant Conversation" edition of Pimsleur for whatever language you care about
( that is the most-cost-effective edition they make -- about $50 US ),
and try it: if you NEED to function, and discover just how stunningly effective Pimsleur is, then go the whole-deal.
Playing-at learning language is for people who like playing-at it, and it must have its place, eh?
( the "playing-at" comment is only because the culture+pictures+context+etc play-games start at the second level of language, not at the first, and if you're trying to learn a language, beginning with step-two isn't the maximally-effective way of getting automatic-competence.
The Rosetta Stone isn't a brand I've tried, or maybe I have ( don't remember the name of the program it was, a friend who swore by it ), but the method misses the fundamental level's near-instinct-competence growing )
Cheers whichever choice you commit, and don't be surprised by the methods nature wrote into your brain being more effective than others, no matter how "nice" they are ( simply because nothing prepared me for how that having-my-language-brain track someone else's conversation felt, after only, 3 or so lessons ).
R-Mind mode ( right-brain-hemisphere dominant mode ) drives the entire brain/central-nervous-system differently, and more wholely.
One of the books on "my" registry ( which is books I recommend to others, because they undo specific dysfunctions hammered into us
. . and that "registry" has no address attached to it, so it CANNOT be used to boost "me" ) is:
The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain ( Betty Edwards PhD )
Most people can work-through ( merely-reading does NOT gain the result. ) the thing, if pushing it, in 5 days.
It took me years, because
a) the psychic experience of being less-left-brain-polarized made me want to scream
b) I'm a bit braindamaged ( look in the "autistic" direction, and get a telescope )
HAVING experienced the difference between L-Mind and R-Mind, and having considered the differences between
R-Mind cultures ( awareness, wholeness, ideogram, equality, drumming, earth/mother, etc. ), and
L-Mind cultures ( rote/rules, mechanism, atomic-sequential languages, inequality, trumpets/strings, sky-gods, etc. )
it's part of a DEEP ( and possibly periodic ) tide-shift among humanity's mind/knowing, and it is choosable, among us now, as individuals.
We got 2 modes available to us ( L-Mind & R-Mind ), and each gets us some advantages .
( cutting/logic/technology/specialization
vs
totality/wholeness/harmony/all-at-onceness )
and anyone who develops R-Mind has a significant advantage ( consider the weird advantage of the aikido-masters, gained over decades. .
consider that what they're doing is indirectly developing R-Mind. )
Why The Hell Not Directly Train R-Mind and gain the advantages?
Miyamoto Musashi, Leonardo DaVinci, and Winston Churchill all painted
( all got VERY-FAR into R-Mind ), and all were considered THE exemplar of their kind/field
the Magic Dismissal "Mere Coincidence!" is one that looks thin when seeing just how execptional these ones were, but
once one has experienced the shift itself, and experienced the consequences of it, then
the Magic Dismissal becomes a known Strident Lie.
Anyways, try it, and you can gain the advantages of it yourself, & those advantages extend to one's body-awareness and body-health.
Do Astanga yoga in R-Mind, sometime, and you'll understand just why "ninjutsu" is a branch of buddhism,
& not a branch of shogun/samurai-establishmentism.
. . .
PS: the Pattern, of human hemisphere-dominance, is shown partly in writing-systems, partly in musical-instrument-choice, and musical-participation ( segregated-musicians is L-Mind determination ), partly in rights, partly in harmony, partly in "art" painting/depiction, etc.
the pieces of the Pattern are visible throughout history, and if you start digging/watching, you'll find it's bloody obvious. "Age of Light" may well end-up being known as "Age of False Light", when the difference between inner-light, inspiration, and mechanical-light, or specialization-expression, become noticed, but for everyone who doesn't see the Pattern, just ignore it, don't try the alternative mode of knowing, and THEN its non-existence among your mind proves it Does Not Exist, right?
-laughing-
Try it, anyways: scientific method is based on falsification, and if you experience right-brain-dominant-mode mind, and do NOT experience any different central-nervous-system-mode, then I'd be absolutely astonished
I would have written at-least an online minibook for The GIMP
( How To, for photographers who care just to get good-enough-for-results results... ), except that:
a) The GIMP ( or its development ) won't ever be end-user or end-power-user responsive, and
b) The GIMP won't ever support efficient workflow, and
c) The GIMP won't ever support efficient & effective colour-calibration
( at-least not until EVERYone else has done it for sooo long that it finally becomes acceptable for it to do so )
d) The GIMP won't ever support all the plugins for photoshop, even though it HAS to be possible to code an app for that sort of compatibility
( since Jasc's program did. . . )
e) The GIMP won't EVER have a wonderful-to-work-with UI ( or even a usable one )
etc.
It's a variation of The Debian Syndrome: .
User-centrism, and USE-centrism
. . oppose .
institutional-mentality or institutional-modality,
& mutex is mutex ( mutually-exclusive ).
KOffice's Krita is designed to displace The GIMP, and it's going v1.5 rc1 at the end of February 2006, .. KOffice's spreadsheet is unfortunately insane, so function can't possibly be the centre of that,
so simply ditch The GIMP and have-at something designed with function as a centre of it
( not necessarily THE centre of it, mind
& that mind-set may be contaminating the rest of KOffice. . . )
The sanest thing to do, it seems, it to let The GIMP be authoritative(tm), and institutional(tm), and to Let It Die(tm)
while replacing it with something that is usable & works.
The market moves-on, right?
( just as Linux is displacing other OSs from many markets, and most/all servers )
PS this isn't an attack against The GIMP, or The GIMP's developers, it's simply a user-perspective, developed over YEARS of attempting to find OPEN-evolution in The GIMP, and the final & certain recognition/identification of What Happened. .
And, having seen equivalent happen in countless different ways, throughout our world, from the Kremlin to Washington+NSA+HomelandSec++ to RIAA to Hospitals to every kind of institution/entity:
it's the basic perception that Agile is opposite to the RELIGION of establishment,
& establishment is an unconscious religion, is all. .
Fighting the undertow of the river we all splash-around on requires coherent determination, and how many "groups" or "teams" have coherent-determination that is contradictory of the undertow owning them? Eh?
Percentage-wise, it's 0.00% or something?
'The 30 MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES of the US Marines' ( Freedman ) is a book that showed how to attack, at an organizational level, that same institutional-inertia-mode,
but Who Honestly Cares either about their life-quality, their work, their family/workgroup/community, or anything, ENOUGH to commit different-mode, coherently, consistently, ongoingly?
Anyone?
PPS: the "registry" link of this post has a link to the Freedman book, and some other good ones, and you can read others comments of the books on the amazon.com pages for each of 'em, so you don't have to trust my opinion of 'em at all, and no there isn't any address attached to that "registry" so its a For YOUR Information, only, registry, see. . .
Think of the beauty of the Corporate-Ignoring Enforcement, though, the inevitable consequence. . .
"even the worm will turn"
Abuse some population enough, and they'll start getting .. not just ornery, but ornery+organized+momentum+growing, and then Problems(tm) begin. . .
IF The Industry Association/Authority has determined to be as obnoxious as this looks, AND people usually "justify" contributing to abuse by identifying with "authority", but that "justification" breaks-down now, because the abuse is too pervasive and too obviously non-necessary, then the backlash is going to take-root among non-geeks, and that backlash-growing is going to change attitudes among a few lawmakers, among a few politicos, among a number of campaigns that happen to value not being stampeded-on or lynched ( though I fully expect some mass-media to snow-under intelligent though/discussion, in order to make conforming-believing. . . )
Ignorance-enforcement's action/reaction is sometimes poetically beautiful in the unfolding of its obliteration-of- its-own-worth, if nothing else. . .
Also, it's pretty hard to not laugh at the idiots who think they're getting Real Good Historical Position in enforcing such ignorance/abuse, as the inevitable backlash is going to rip their comfy importance right out from their make-believe history/reality. . .
I hear there was a film about the '80's called Barbarians At The Gate that showed the shallowness of self-important-greed, as glorified by Our Marvelous Creation/System. . .
Would anyone who pushes such arrangement really want to be ridiculed or ignored for eternity because of their contribution? Or would that be horrendous to the kinds-of-person more likely to be committing these arrangements against everyone?
It's all comical and pathetic and stupid, simultaneously.
IF only indie films are going to be viewable in high-res, freely, then Guess What, dumbass **AA moronity: indie-video IS GOING TO INCREASE AND DISPLACE YOUR MARKETSHARE, BECAUSE YOU FORCED THE MARKET TO CHANGE THAT WAY, and it is simple, and it is poetically funny. . .
_Authority_ assumes _IT_ is the only-god, and doesn't "get" what happened when mp3's made a new market, and unmade an old-one: what the hell makes anyone think The Great God Authority can think now, when it couldn't today or yesterday, never did, and never bloody will?
Forcing everyone's expensive/new entertainment system to be non-usable for Hollywood stuff manufactures grudge against Hollywood ( and the owned/collared legislators/lapdogs ),
and one simple, clear and unblockable way for that grudge to express ( positively, in this-one's opinion ) is simply to create ALTERNATIVE content, to get LOTS of someones creating alternative content, and to compete against **AA monopoly in its entirety.
Dig the books on plot, on indie film-making, on videography, on lighting ( there's one . . Prescription for Better Videos, or something, on the amazon.com "registry" I made for everyone else: books I recommend generally, and WHY. . it's a very nice little book covering the basic basics, written by a TV/News cameraman. . hm, I misplaced my copy, here, didn't I. . . )
Search on amazon.com for each aspect of the kind of videography YOU want/care-about, sort the results of that search by Customer Rating,
and nail each dimension of it yourself ( working on one single knowing at a time, to get steady progress, rather-than sabotaged "progress"! ),
and PUT THE WORK OUT THERE, and the cartel won't be able to stomp-out all creativity ( Ogg Vorbis has a video-equivalent, I gather: Ogg Theora or something ),
and the more one does stuff, the better one gets, right?
Consider the alternative: to be stopped-up, unable to speak, unable to communicate, to only know what we're told to know, to have our minds and spirits obliterated or die?
What happened, we stopped living/thinking a century or two ago?
Geepers, people. . .
Firstly, I'd been under the impression that some galaxies behaved differently ( because the "dark matter" had been stripped out from them, or otherwise relocated, or something, in intergalaxy-collision ), and this was part of the validation of the "dark matter" idea, AND
Why in hell does everyone call it Dark Matter, when it is Dark Mass, but with n-1 .. 1 ( or 0? ) dimensional branes ( assuming n dimensions ), rather than "particles", so the term "matter" builds assumptions that enbogify our understanding from the get-go?
Eh?
Child Onset Schizophrenia is the culmination of .
1. being born with bits-of-brain missing, and
2. having one's brain-structure different thereby, and
3. having one's braincell structure different ( different kind of alpha-7 nicotinic-receptors, wrong number of dopamine receptors, something profoundly monkeyed with the glial cell line derived neurotrophic factor, and probably with the glial cells theirselves, etc. ), and
4. having a significant portion of one's brain ( 1/10th?. . . starting in parietal-tissue ) slaughtered ( programmed-cell-death ) off, taking about 5 years ( in one's teens ), and doing greater ( visual centres ) or lesser amounts of decimation, then. .
What happens when someone who is already experiencing this, gets their central nervous-system distorted by LSD or equiv?
Catastrophic failure to deal-with reality? Failure to balance? Slaughter of some bystander because they were rigged and could not stand against the combined-force of their inherent-defectiveness and the drugs?
There's a difference between pushing against the side of a solidly centered/balanced boat, and pushing-against a lopsided, explosive-laden, misconfigured boat, eh?
Jeff Duntemann called Eiffel "ada done right", and he's a guy I trust for knowing what he's talking about ( my first "it works for me" assembler book was wrotened by 'im ), and he found the programming-by-contract paradigm and the .. sorry, but the concept-shape in my memory translates as "sustainable-correctness" .. of it to be worth-getting, and what I know about Erlang could be printed on the period at the middle of this sentence ( yes I've just glanced at erlang.org's beginner-stuff ), so I'm asking you which should I learn, for what process-reasons, for what problem-domain-reasons, in essence why would you recommend Eiffel over Erlang, and why would you recommend Erlang over Eiffel ( I want to get your sense of where each is better, since you've very-seriously considered Erlang, see )?
I'd decided, already, to standardize me on Ruby ( agility & clarity ), Eiffel ( for high-integrity infrastructure that needs to be compiled rather-than scripted ), possibly OCaml ( just because what I've read of-it indicates it's good for engineering type problems ), and possibly Pliant ( No Weak Points, rather-than good-for one particular kind of problem/domain or kind-of-thinking. . . )
I want at-most 4 languages, orthogonal to each other ( enough ), to clarify my mind, so I'm concentrating on the problem-solution rather-than wrestling-with arbitrary or bizarre language curlicues, and therefore have much-greater probability of rooting-out the problems, wrong-assumptions, wrong-paradigms, etc, as compared-with ones who are caught in lower-level-thinking, or being "caught in the groove" of the technology, if you see what I mean. . .
This is sorta like my decision to standardize on English, Japanese, Arabic, and UML2, since one is structural-implication, one is indirectness, one is emotion, and one is schematic, and if one's mind is in the habit of knowing in these four profoundly-different kinds of ways ( and in not being raptured by roccoco detail ), then one isn't very likely to be thrown by some problem-assumption as others are, eh?
( FYI, I'd be using http://www.pimsleur.com/ language-training for the human-language stuff, since I've already experienced how it blows-away the conventional competition, for effectiveness in training/learning. . . they're awesomely good, in how well they work. . . )
The Definitive Business Plan ( Richard Stutely )
That link has its "previous-history" tracking information ripped-out, BTW
The amazon.com "registry" link of this post has other books of similar excellence listed, as well as why I'm recommending 'em ( no address is attached to it, so no-one can buy 'em for me via the thing, it's posted there for everyone's information ),
but the book you NEED is Richard Stutely's.
I'd also recommend "Thinking Visually" and "The Power of the 2x2 Matrix", but immediate-need means I'm posting this now, not after working-over additions for hours. Cheerses, eh?
For years hard-drives have relied on Partial Response / Maximum Likelyhood
reading of data from the magnetic "bits"
( I think there are 20+ bits with the ECC, for every "byte" given to the outside world,
but don't know if that's before filesystem or not ), and
magnetic bits do oppose each other ( or pull each-other ), &
aren't immutable, & if you've ever tried reading data from old data-tapes
or old diskettes/floppies, then you know that bit-rot exists.
( also lost data in cheap CDRs/DVD-Rs -> use CD-RWs/DVD+RWs
because they record in metal, not in organic-dye )
~magnetic tape has held music without loss for decades~
bullshit on that, unfortunately. . .
Remember the bit about ALL the master-tapes in the studios ( except BASF, IIRC )
having to be dehydrated+transcribed onto other tapes, because they hadn't
been stored in dry-storage, and the magnetic ~emulsion~ ( or whatever it's called ) on
the polyester-film had absorbed moisture from the air,
and so "playing" the reel of tape wiped-OFF the magnetic material?
Does anyone here consider
Sounds Like It Did Last Time I Heard It Years Ago == Digitally Identical?
In the lower frequencies it takes, what, 10% or 20% distortion to be audible?
Does a 10% loss of one's compressed-archive seem like a recoverable position with no legal liabilities?
I'd
1. record on RAID5 or RAID6
2. fsck annually, just to wake up the drive & check if it's OK
3. transfer the files from one drive to another ( N archive-drives == N+1 drives needed, therefore ) biannually,
because then the data'd be "freshly" imprinted in the medium, and so the magnetic bits wouldn't have faded/moved much
4. make DAMN certain I'm using S.M.A.R.T. on every drive, always, and am actively monitoring the things
5. get some plastics company, or wasn't there some company with a name like Turtle or something? . . to
make "toolbox" cases for the things, or get Pellican cases for 'em ( waterproof ) or
some equivalent aluminum armoured cases for batches of 'em
6. one can send the freed ( 2yo or 4yo ) drives into the desktops, making everyone happier
The beauty of this is that one can continue migrating the data onto bigger and bigger drives,
so the physical storage issues are suppressed
( which may be an issue, if one is storing the critical-stuff in a bank safe deposit box ).
For more information on data-loss in magnetic media, try digging 'round in the pro-audio usenet discussions, over those DATs. .
Also, I hear MiniDV has some issues.
But for immediate verification, just listen to your own tapes, listening for "pre-echo" in 'em, and
you've right there definite infidelity to what they recorded originally.
It's easy to see, when you transcribe your audio-tapes into a sound-editor,
& can get a reel (: no pun intended ) good look at the accuracy of magnetic recording. .
Naive assessment, unfortunately:
Western paradigm ( everything is monetary-equivalent-object ) vs
Eastbloc paradigm ( everything really is only object ) versus
non-Confusian Asian paradigms ( everything is relationship, relationship is reality )
hasn't anything to do with the ebb and flow of totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism is a more-fundamental level.
Sorta like there are 2 ( or more ) dimensions of our reality, and we insist that the superficial-level is the only-level while enforcing the change we "oppose" at the fundamentaller level.
Which is exactly what happens when someone is heavily addicted to alcohol, ferinstance, and concentrates on pouring measuredly, in order to not drink too much ( per minute ), while ignoring that it's owning them, & they're obliterating their life.
'Tis simply the 2 Problem Problem in action. . .
Whenever solving The Problem doesn't solve The Problem, .
there's probably 2 different problems involved, and one simply isn't getting a high-enough or abstract-enough perspective to see how one is being shucked'n'jived by the dissonance, is all. .
They got 3 watt white LEDs over at http://www.luxeonstar.com/, brighter than damn near anything comparable ( certainly brighter than any off-the-shelf LED I could find in me normaller electronics-shop ), efficienter than normal incandescent, 100k hours lifespan, they got lenses for the things ( I'm using a wide-angle for the immediate-ground light and an elliptical for the "high-beam" light in my 2-LED bike-light. . . that puts-out up-to 160 lumens, in stepped levels, and runs around 1.5h on 8 Ni-MH AA's, gotta mount the LEDs solidly onto heatsinks, though, so I'm using a big aluminum-case as a heatsink, and epoxying the things solidly on, with a copper-wedge to angle the "high-beam" up a bit & the wide-beam down a bit. . . )
Really read the technical stuff for heat-sinking 'em, as some of the stuff, like a single LED on a HUUUGE heatsink indicates these suckers need special treatment. . . and the special-power-supplys for 'em make some things interesting, like dimming the LEDs. . . constant-voltage, variable current, it seems. . .
Also, watch-out for the life-span: the 5 watt white ones, in the "portable" section, have only 500 hours life, avg, and there aren't any ( at the present ) 5 watt white normal ones, so the III's are the brightest long-life whites you can get from them, anyways. . .
Digikey.com, of course, for the rest of the stuff: the weather-sealed switches, the potentiometers for making the multiple levels of output for the power-supply, the not-electrolytic thank-you-very-much tantalum 220uf capacitor for power input stabilization, the sealed aluminum case to build the suckers onto. . . great fun
And I WISH someone was making a 2-head lamp with these things commercially, but no, that ain't the case, so Gerry-rigging it is the only way to go
Disclaimer, I'm just some average-joe, making me a bike-light because no-one produces 'em the way I want 'em, not affiliated with anyone, and all that. . .
and they've got conversion-units, if you want to convert your normal-incandescent-flashlight to an LED unit, BTW, costly bastards, though. . .
Here's a link to the genetic consequences of the technology of 'civilization', through the most-recent 500 centuries, in New Scientist
Maybe that is true, of-itself, BUT
Agriculture remained, by-and-large, among the ones formed into it while growing-up, and if some agrarian population mixed geographically with some nomadic population, agriculture didn't take-over the nomads, the nomads just didn't establish+amplify their population, is all. . .
Moveable Type, Gutenberg's inventation, changed Humanity's process by to-great-degree democratizing publishing ( and therefore knowing ), and by changing-the-rules of perceiving/learning: .
before then most were among
the Lower Tier of
the Two-Tiered Level-Playing-Field(tm), and
that invention changed our rules. .
Anytime humanity's process changes, due to technology, it changes what ( portion/aspect ) of humanity survives now,
( though it may shorten our race's survival, since evolution doesn't think-ahead. . . )
highspeed internet, microwave ovens, "IM" ( though IRC seems to be better at knowledge-growing, and IM seems to be social-addiction in lieu of knowledge-growing ), the cellphone, websites reachable by anyone ( who isn't beneath Authoritarian Rule, and can afford the computer+electricity+access ). . .
These things change whom we interact-with, change how we interact, and therefore change the population that results, or is, next generation.
They also change our mind's forming, so that a brainscan of a young-person who's experiencing some particular instance of event won't experience it with the same kind-of brain-energy-pattern/shaping as what an old bastard like I would. . .
Which means that different human-potential manifestly-is, after-the-change. . .
Some schools of communications use video of that brain-scan-difference to hammer-home how .
Making One's Work For One's Audience is something that cannot be based on the assumption
"They're All Like Me":
that one, IF one wants to communicate with a differently-formed group, has to understand their mode. .
Marshal McLuhan's "The Medium Is The mAssage" was all about how electric technology changed US from river/story to modular/plugin mode.
( strange-capitalization is mine, spelling was HIS:
the bogo-meme that displaced what he said is pushed by
Mass Mindlessness, or MassMedia(tm), but
THINK, and DEMAND thinking, and one CAN gain,
in one's own evolving, damnit! )
PS: that "registry"-link is books I recommend to everyone, not "get 'em for me" ( you couldn't anyways: there's no address associated with that "registry" ). If you value using your remaining-life to make your-worth be your substance, actively, then consider 'em, /. and I'll be notified 'bout it, which does-away-with spam-friendly e-mail. . .
and if you consider any to be better, then tell me about 'em, please!
You can post a reply to any message of mine here on
And thanks in advance to any who clue-me-in to better/greater leverage, eh?
These meets your CPU speed, but not your RAM reqs, .
http://gumstix.com/spexboards.htmland they've a number of similar such things, including complete "waysmall"s,
but if you need that much RAM, instead of flash-storage, then mini-ITX is your only hope. .
I suspect that the thing they did was similar to what IBM did when they went after Kasparov the second-time:
They've got a complexer algorithm ( algorithm whose components are algorithms, of drastically-differently feeling kinds-of-'em ) that is sooo-much more effective, that it can run on significantly-lesser hardware than what would require itself if using the more-established algorithms.
Therefore I'm wondering if anyone has modularized the algorithms for mix-and-match to make more-autonomous machine-minds? ( in an opensource-way. . . )
BTW, the guy who is:
a) asserting that my telling the OP to get a good surge-suppresor means they are going to get a worthless one, therefore
b) I should have recommended a cheap UPS to protect them against brownouts. . . isn't getting that
c) cheap UPSes don't protect against brownouts/sags, only line-interactive and double-conversion ones do. AND
d) if they wouldn't get a good surge-suppressor, what in hell makes me think they're going to get a real UPS, anyways?
I was wrong to not-think of the UPS.
Period.
But, if you're going to get one, get a line-interactive one, for your system's sake.
Quite simply, every investment you make is an investment in your capability
Safe a few dollars on the tools, but then your work-capability is harmed. . . better-for-you??
Not.
Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the US Marines says it better than I do, but if you figure the marines are wrong, when they die when they err, well-and-good, but then we differ in understanding non-reconcilably, and that's fine, of course. . .
That "Amazon Registry" link of mine isn't for me, it's for you people:
.
you can click on the books and read others' reviews of 'em, and choose your-own-self how you feel about the meanings in 'em.
The Marines Managemnet-Principles book by David H. Freedman that I recommend to most everyone is on that list, so you can get your sense-of-it through there, and
no, no-one can buy me anything though that list: I've got no address on it to prevent that. .
Cheers, people
Good For The Consumer????
The world in no way revolves around parasitic "consumer" thingies, the world revolves around the entities that are = .
( leverage * magnitude )
and assume "leverage" to be significantly-coincident-with "money". .
and they make the rules tilt the world more to centring on them.
This is the "nucular family" paradigm, transposed-up, is all.
The non-core entities simply aren't valid in any way that can make the future-result respect their worth/heart/meaning.
There isn't any malice or anything in it, it's simply sentient-entropy eradicating diversity/complexity/vitality in its processing. . .
Geeks churn, most normal-people don't.
( this referring to the frequency of replacing one's machines )
That the OPer is totally out-of-the-loop on modern sockets etc. indicates that they AREN'T going to replace the machine every 2 years,
therefore their making this machine an investment rather than a 2-year-lease-equivalent
( transposed from cars, where people are rationaller, to computers where people aren't ),
seems sane.
The OP began with "It's been a few years since I built my current system by. . .", .
and I trusted that to be fact, not deliberately-manufactured red-herring, is all. .
-shrug-
Sometimes "penny wise, and pound-foolish"
is true.
( translation for non-Brits: "cents-wise, dollars-stupid" )
Also, the OP didn't ask to tell them what was right for them ( and I didn't attempt to assume that ), .
it asked if there was a guide, so I showed 'em how one person makes such choices, as an instance-of-guide,
and pointed out a couple of good, and trustworthy, information-sites, fully expecting others to give contradictory information,
so the OPer could then make-up their own mind more-informedly. .
Others' total-reliance on Toms Hardware makes me shudder, as ThePabster's bias . .
( apparently induced by love of their bigger advertisers ) I gave-up arguing-with years-ago. .
( remember Van Smith's site? the one that abused pay-by-the-byte netters by its force-refresh? but that cut through distortive BS with an integrity that was really worth fighting-for? they, IIRC, and others, cut through that fundamental-bias to show its distortion ). .
Lightning Happens.
Lightning means wires between Your Home(tm) and Elsewhere(tm) pick-up energy.
Energy goes somewhere.
IF that somewhere happens to involve your computer, it's likely killed or damaged, unless protected.
( notice that MOST comuter-users only complain about malware when they are no-longer able to USE their computer due to it!
protection/proactive-defense ISN'T normal, so I'm trying to recommend action that gets committed protecting their machine, see )
It doesn't matter how well the other-end of the wire is protected, if
the easiest-path for the electricity to discharge is through your machine.
( and the energy in the nearest-mile finds that your-machine is the short-cut )
An oversize UPS is an investment I wish all computer-users made, but I'm trying to be realistic:
it's better to have protection against having one's machine killed than to have none.
OPer, GET a line-interactive UPS, and rely-on-it.
If you live among a power-nasty grid, then get a Zero Surge to protect ALL your expensive electronics, simply because they're the only ones who don't rely-on fade-in-use MOVs.
Allied Electronics sells 'em ( as do others, check http://froogle.google.com/ )
It is even-better to protect one's data from corruption or loss .
( therefore both line-interactive UPS -- power-sags are the bigger data-loss means than are outright blackouts --
and backups are necessary if one REQUIRES one's work ), but I'm not holding my breath for that among normals. .
I didn't bother recommending a DVD-RW burner, but that'd be a requirement if backups are needing to be archival, too
( just concerning meself with the core stuff, since that seemed to b
IF one knows that one wants a machine that will run "new" release programs in 3 years, that means AMD64, rather than 32-bit
( compatibility-problems, as-in programs simply not running, have been found on the Intel implimentation of x86_64 )
That cuts down the field greatly.
THEN, one looks at whether the thing is guaranteed to be wordprocessing-only
( or equivalent non-taxing, ie NO multimedia-rendering or vid-conferencing, ferinstance ),
and one can sanely go with single-channel-RAM ( socket 754 ),
rather-than dual-channel-RAM ( socket-939 or socket-940 )
THEN once looks at what kind of expandibility one may need, later. . .
Video-card?
No-longer does AGP count ( they aren't making top-end ones anymore, and soon won't be making middle-of-the-road ones, either! ),
so one requires PCIe ( PCI-Express ) 16x on the motherboard.
Does one want to be forced to find a firewire-card to add-in later? or does one want everything built-in?
Does one want the ability to add-in PCIe add-in cards for, say, high-end-audio, or for video-capture, or for ANYTHING?
one needs PCIe slots, then, too ( PCI is going the way of the dodo )
All in all, the one mobo I know-of, that at-the-moment covers it ( including a 4x PCIe slot, for later! ),
is by MSI http://www.msicomputer.com/index2.asp
Unfortunately, it's got a fan on the chipset,
so it's an on-when-one-uses-it cheap workstation-board,
rather-than an always-on everything-server-board
( fans die after however many running-hours they happen to survive )
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?mode l=K8N_Neo4_Platinum&class=mb
Abit's got one that is missing the PCIe 4x slot, but that has no chipset-fan, called the
Abit AN8 Ultra
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?c ategories=1&model=278
Right, that's the mobo, howabout the CPU?
syncronous-with-the-RAM is a good rule
IF the mobo can deal-with PC3200 RAM ( these 2 can ), then that means the RAM's communicating-speed is 400MHz ( rather-than, say, 333MHz ) .
Since there isn't any valid thing as 1/3 of a wait-cycle ( it's either 0 or it's 1, with computers ), I want the CPU's actual physical speed to be a multiple of that, like say 2000MHz.
That gets the speed, so what choices are there?
cheap, and I wasn't able to get-one, is the
SDA3400DIO28W Sempron 3400+ Socket 939 ( the "3400+" is the approximate equivalent in Intel-speed, known-as its "rating" )
More expensive, and having more on-chip cache-memory, is the
2.0 GHz 939-pin Athlon 64 3200+
Ultimate capability would-be the X2 chip ( 2 Athlon64 cores in one chip, so when one program is swamping one core, the system still responds )
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInforma tion/0,,30_118_9485_13041%5E13076,00.html
shows that cheapest multiple-of-400MHz X2 chip is the "3800+" and the highest-end is 2.4GHz "4800+"
Hit http://www.pricewatch.com/ to discover what sane-prices are for the things, but be sitting-down when you see the highest-end ones. .
Case? Aluminum. That keeps hard-drives cooler ( whole case acts like a nice-big heatsink ).
Make decorations for it using pipecleaners & a hot-melt-glue gun, if you want. . . : )
Video-card?
IF you want quiet, go for ATI rather-than NVidia ( fan-speed, I'm talking about, here ),
and if you want cheap, grab some X300 or something,
the higher-end cards the X800 XL is a very good bu
Use RE-Writables, not WORM.
RW discs:
*blanking aneals metal-layer in disc
*burning quick-melts spots of metal in disc, so they freeze quickly to different crystallization than the annealed "normal"
*reading means reading the changes in reflectivity that occur ( or differences in polarization, in magneto-optical, IIRC ) in the METAL reflecting the laser-beam.
Write Once discs:
*new disc is "blank"
*laser "burns" organic-dye in writing,
*reading-laser "sees" the diff between burnt and non-burnt as less-transparent vs more-transparent, and the reflective-layer behind-it means that this is usable binary encoding. . . ( beam goes through organic-dye twice and then is read, or perhaps gets-eaten by the burnt dye and then its absence is read. . . )
*organic-dye decays
IF you care about archival, you then store complete versions of your files,
with checksums and ECC on RW discs.
IF you are using organic-dye write-once discs, then you are basing your ability-to-recover your stuff based on Estimates & Marketing Claims(tm). ..
Cheerses
and many others, PLEASE try http://www.pimsleur.com/ language-training. . .
The diff is night||day. . .
This works by training one's brain the way babies learn the bits of language: individual-sounds, sylables, and associating meaning with sound-forms in one's automatic words brain/mind.
Not the industrial-era gigo+roteLearning "training" that is usual in language-"education".
or rather, to be treated as a
Cherished, intelligent, living-meaning & living-being.
The definition of "human" is usually wrong, among others' minds, see. . .
: p
Then it is perhaps utterly obvious that it ISN'T death-on-citizens ( all nationalities ) that is offensive against Authoritarian-assumption,
but rather threat-against anyone whose importance-assuming is in "Authority"?
( note that when someone's pushing for obliteration of individual-rights, they're usually assuming they are belonging-among Authority, though they'll scream when it stomps *them*.
Unconscious-mind thinks drunk. . . )
100x as-many Americans slaughtered by collisions is MUNDANE, and therefore isn't threat-against-Authority. .
Whereas. . .
Priorities, people, and don't pretend *actuality* interferes with enforcing-obedience/conforming-making. . .
for that isn't true: actuality simply doesn't, nor has it any-right to, according-to unconscious assumption. . .
: \
( no, this isn't attacking any group, it's attacking unconscious-mind, a substance this-one has fought among oneself . . lots and lots. somewhat winning, now. . . )
250 Blade Servers, + 1144 Intel 2.8GHz processors = 15 000 PCs is INTEL-math.
They're multiplying the NumberOfProcessors, times the Frequency ( multiplied by pipeline-stages ), times the number of milli-amps used by each!
You want the AdBlock Extension to Firefox ( it may take several re-loads to get that page loaded ).
Don't like a particular kind of something that appeared in yer browsing?
Either
a) click on the AdBlock thingy in the right-end of the status-bar, and you get a window displaying all the blockable elements, or
b) right-click on the element-to-block itself, and AdBlock it.
One of the first I do is create an item "*.swf", which eats all shockwave/flash from my browsing ( it can be set to remove elements from before Firefox gets to see 'em ). It renders some sites non-viewable, but since those sites won't-allow blind-users access to their product/service, they don't need me either, do they? ( should I subsidize corps(es) that oppose the inclusion of older friends/relatives? or eyeball-injured people? )
Why not just remove the shockwave player plugin? Because sometimes, I have to have swf support ( some fsckhead provider of something I have to get access to, for whatever reason, like support on some product I'm stuck working-with ) and it's easier to temporarily remove that AdBlock item than it is to download/install/update the swf rpm.
Then I go hunting for bad ones, hitting more popular sites and seeing what one can eradicate from 'em. . . building-up a good collection of the things. . .
http://ads.*.* is another. /recip/ is another, since it seems to usually-be a big reciprocal-google-bombing arrangement.
Lots of ways to get AdBlocker to eat stuff that is bad.
Being back in linux ( yayyyy! ) I'm finding that I really wish the extension worked with Konqueror, but probably I'll just copy-out the domain-names from AdBlock and put 'em into a hosts file with addresses of 0.0.0.0. More bother to do, but it'll kill 'em for Konq & everything else, too.
Some people use some of the anti-sleaze 'hosts' files kicking 'round on the 'net, instead-of, or as-well-as, this