If I remember correctly, the estimate for running a wire is about $100 for the first wire to a location, and an additional $10 for each additional wire to the same location.
Now this assumes that you have relatively new type construction. E.g. Drywall where you can put small holes in it and fish the wire through. Older type construction (say Plaster on Lathe in The US...), or Italian type construction (Plaster on Cinder-Block for interior walls? Gimme a break.) will cost significanty more.
If you are willing to put your wires on the wall with clips so that everyone sees it, It costs almost nothing. Except for the wife's continual noises about "ugly".
I suppose the real question is one of ease: At commodity prices, a Wireless Base unit (802.11g) and card (802.11g) will cover most homes and work well for everything but streaming video - for $100. It will take something like a half-hour to setup. Additional client cards are under $50.
In my house (US, built in 1909) and similar ones, you would have to cut a channel in the plaster from your patch-panel to every drop point. This would take a few hours with a circular saw and carbon cutting blade. Then someone will have to drill through all of the petrified joists. Then the wire would have to be pulled (another 15 minutes/drop). Then it would cost several hundred (to over a thousand) to cover it back up. In some homes you will have to do this anyhow, as the wall construction is Plaster over Wire Mesh, over Joists. (Think no wireless reception through it.) However, putting a wired network in an old house is expensive. Putting one in a new home costs less, but still more than WiFi.
oh, wait, I live in DC and therefore am not enough of a citizen to have voting representatives. Never mine we have more people than Rhode Island, or Montana.
The Lt. Govenor, Michael ("My Opposition is made of bad mud-slingers, but I like puppies")Steele, is also running for Senate. I think it is as much about that race as any other.
Here is the part that gets me:
In the last round of elections, we all said that DieBold and cohorts stole the election with electronic voting machines. Granted, we all know that we could hack the machines with our left testicle (Women Too)... But it was the Evil Republicans who *stole* the election with the voting machines.
Here we have a guy (Whom I do not like) stating that the state should go to computer-read Optical Scan Ballots. (Read: *Computers* with a PAPER TRAIL) Why are we not supporting the bozo with the right idea. The Election will always be between a douchbag and a bloody tampon because that's what it takes to run. (Southpark reference) - but when one gets the right idea (e.g. paper trail), we should support it.
Life changes. A paper trail doesn't. Get one: Priceless.
This message should in no way reflect that optical scan ballots cannot be manipulated. (Just send the wrong type of pencil to the precincts who will vote for Y.) But the paper trail can be inspected for any grand irregularities.
The statement "Vinyl has better audio quality" has to be qualified. Heavily. In most cases it is effectively not true, either because the audio equipment is too crap for you to tell the difference - or the record is worn and has lost fidelity. (If you own a record player (and Microphone/neeedle) that costs under $250: it's not High Fidelity.)
If you have audio equipment that cost more than $3000 (purchased in the last 5 years), AND you know how to balance your mm/mc arm, and you go to classical (perhaps Jazz) concerts so you know what the music sounds like, you can ignore this post.
Boring details below.
It is true that as a medium, a LP record (or even a 45) inherently has truer fidelity than a CD. However this means that the records have a truer version of the music than the CD. (Some qualifications, assumes that the origional recording is done in analogue, or at a higher sampling bitrate than a CD. Decent transfer process, etc...)
To go from "Records are better recordings of music than CDs" to "Vinyl has better audio Quality" in the sense of the statement made: (e.g. it sounds better) is a bit of a leap. This leap requires High Fidelity equipment.
High Fidelity Equipment means 1) Good Audio Equipment (Speakers & Amplifier), 1a) Including good isolation for the record player (vibration: Bad), 2) A Good record Player, 2b)A good Mic and (unworn) needle, 2c) Correct wieghting for the playback arm for the needle; 3) An unworn / undamaged record. Some people have this equipment (not many), and the ability to set it up (pay to have it setup) correctly. Most people do not have this equipment.
For example: You will *may* hear better sound from a $250+ Amp with $400+ Speakers and a $250 Turntable/mic. (I'm assuming that amps have gotten much better than they used to be. In any case, you will need a minimum of $1000 in sterio equipment to hear an difference from Vinyl to CD. (True, and fake, audiophiles will say I'm wrong: it costs more.)
The USB Record Player I have seen was about $90. This means you can play records, not in High Fidelity. You need to have High Fidelity to hear the difference between a CD and a Record. Using your computer to play music pretty much rules you out. And what the hell, Ipods have a tactile feel too.
So effectively, the origional post is wrong. Records have the same crap sound as CDs, in most cases. If you can hear the difference between a Record and a CD, probabily your record is damaged or your needle is. Either that or you have a ground loop on your mm/mc that you think sounds nice.
Bite me: I'm Jealous because I used to have a music system where I could hear the difference between a good LP and a good CD (Say DSOTM), now I don't
1) There is a commercial version of Open Office: It's called Star Office 2) The best a commercial product can hope to do against MS is go out of business. 2a) Or be bought by google 3) Did I mention that Open Office was the Free Version of Star Office ($70 ish) from Sun? 3b) Did you know that you could purchase Open Office for $70 ish, and get features like: Real Fonts, a commercial spell checker, the ability to import MS Scripts, and more...
Seriously, how many commercial office suites have you seen that have gone out of business in the last several years? Let me jog your memory.
(Rant-On) Origionally (In the Days of DOS), there were the big three: Word-Perfect Office; Microsoft Office, and Lotus Office. If I remember right (and probably don't): Word-Perfect Office (Also known as Corel, Novel, or what-the-hell) starred Word Perfect, and other me-too programs. Lotus Office (Who knows what it was called back then?) Starred 123, and other me-too programs. Microsoft Office had only me-too programs.
When Windows came out, WordPerfect was the 800 pound gorilla that slipped on the (supplied) bananna peel of not converting to Windows - it was still a DOS program. Microsoft had updated it's me-too programs so that they were good, and (I suspect) first to market as windows programs. At this point in time, many people (Read Businesses) still purchased WordPerfect, and 123 as seperate programs. Microsoft offered a "Windows Native Office Suite" (at a lower price) of me-too (aka: also-ran) programs at a low price, and started eating market share like no tomorrow.
Today, the world runs on Microsoft Office. Period. Lotus office was effectively killed by predatory Windows pricing to computer manufacturers. (You can sell it, but we will raise your cost for Windows from the OEM price of $25 to the consumer price of $100. OK, I pulled the numbers out of my rear, but you get the idea.) [Personally, I like WP's reveal codes, and am likely still better at 123 than Excel, and loved the Lotus Smart Suite Organizational Trays. However, I also think the best version of Word was 5.1 - so there.] No only does everyone run MSOffice, but Corel tried a semi-commercial version of the WordPerfect Suite a few years ago: ($25 for the suite - no Tech support calls - use the forums.) The only thing that happened was they lost more market share. Lotus Smart Suite has effectively disappeared: (Hey look, you can find the Milennium edition for $25 - and I think that's the last time it was updated;) The only reason many people made new Office suites (or componants) recently is for the web.
Let me tell you, Star Office / Open Office was made an open source project because Sun want's to try stopping Microsoft from using Office as a monopoly cash cow. Star Office was a third tier office suite that blew chunks for everything but an amazing scripting ability. (Yes, I used it. As a user, not a programmer, I would rather use the worst componant in every categlory from the big three suites. Ok, a little over stated, but...) Sun bought it because they could afford it, and could afford to make it open source. (e.g: Very few IP issues). It now is an open source project because they want to hurt MS, and it's not really working. Open Office is for everyone who does not need support, and does not want to pirate MS Office. Star Office is for people who need a "supported" office suite that is cross platform. (I don't know. I haven't really heard of any big installations. but it's there if you need it) The Star Office also includes a commercial spell checker, a MS VBA translator/importer, and some other features (like real fonts) that are nice to have. See the Wiki for more. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice)
So you want to create a semi-commercial version of Open Office? Get a clue
(Rant-Off)
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Mebby I kin't spell, but omtimes I get rilled up & lookoat: I sure do speel.
If you RTFA, this is $300 for a HDTV case, a quiet PSU, and a GF6 video integrated Motherboard. The motherboard is an ASIS a8n vm csm. ($78 @ newegg) The case is some sort of Custom HDTV case, not found with easy trawling, lets assume $100 + $60 for the "Ultra Silent" PSU.
Not a bad deal for the $300 barebone. Especially as they configure the Linux for non easily installed stuff.
The cans may not be the same: On My Block of Washington, DC - the government (Which spends $$ spraying for moskuitoes and theoritically fining people for having breeding-cups in their yards) hands out trash cans without drainage holes. This means when is rains a few inches the night that a full trash can goes out - the cans don't get emptied because the G-Men can't lift the cans.
My "Identical" Cans have drainage holes drilled in the bottom. Yes I would like to get them back. Further - I drilled holes in the bottom of the neighbors cans in each side: I would like them to get them back.
However, NFW the goverment is going to use RFID to figure out whose cans are whose, as the cost of sending out someone to check costs more than the can.
It has been pointed out that Beer is made from Malted barely. Not wheat. The correction is correct, I seem to remember purchasing Tins of Malted Mixture to make beer - only toasting grains, or spooging (Putting fruit in cheese-cloth in the mix) for modifying the taste.
More likely, the reason the US became more sucessful was not that we came searching for gold rather than god. (Most of the origional 13 colonies were relegous havens: Maryland for Catholics (England had gone Anglican), Pennsylvania was known for Quackers, various Protistant demoninations in New England, and so on.... Although a few were penal colonies (South Carolina))
I think the real reason the US became prosperous relative to Latin countries was a combination of 1) Enough Whiteys showing up from Europe to make a BIG population. (Say, enough to wipe out all the indiginous people.) Said population allready being "up to date" in technology & needing to work in cities. 2) A relatively liberal government (Both the British & the American ones). and 3) Natural Resources.
Too often I see people generalize the prohibition on narcotics simply as marijuana. I'm rather neutral on the mrijuana argument, though I find the alcohol argument thoroughly unconvincing.
So why do you conflate Marijuana with other illegal drugs in the following section. IF you desired, you could also link tobacco and caffeine as gateway drugs. Alchol is also a gateway drug as it's illegal when you are under the age of X. (21 in the US.)
A lot of people do underestimate the subversive (on the person's psyche and ability to function as a productive member of society) effect that "harder" drugs have on people, since they're only really familiar with recreational cannibis. Not to mention the permanent damage that a drug like opium or heroin can do to a person.
So what if people are talking about cannabis. Perhaps the majority of people are talking about cannabis when they are talking about legalizing drugs? It is the most used "illegal" drug in the US, as well as most parts of the world.
Another problem is this: if narcotics were legalized, who would end up being the distributors? Likely the cartels and networks of dealers that have been selling it illegally for years. You know, the people that cut it with strychnine and analogs so they can inflate their volume and therefore profits, at the expense of the health and safety of their users. Or the brutal cartels that, if they were operating in the same sphere as legitimate businesses, would make every single corrupt corporation, combined in some voltron-like fashion, look like the local, friendly mom & pop.
Likely, the distributors of Marijuana would be the Cigarette companies which allready have the equipment to MASS Produce cigarettes - and consiquently would drive anyone else out of business. Harder drugs would likely be produced by the current drug companies. I doubt anyone with a criminal past would be approved as a "Distributor." Point of sale would likely be things like liquor stores & cigarette vendors. If harder drugs were legalized as well (unlikely) the point of sale would likely be Liquor stores, or Pharmacies.
Even if they did play fair and there way governmental oversight, the damage to the user would still be there. Furthermore, testing narcotics for purity, etc is somewhat time-consuming and actually consumes a portion of the drug, which would raise the costs phenomenally (provided the government did not make the distributors eat the costs. That would be a toss-up).
I beleive this is currently the case for Alchol, and Tobacco. Since most of the cost of drugs is "Hazard" markup. (Chances of being caught & put in prison) the cost issue is silly. Case in point: We can assume a similar cost for making Marijuana cigarettes as for making tobacco cigarettes - $1 for growing, packaging, and transport. Considering a US Pack of Cigarettes is about one ounce (27g?) and that weight of Marijuanna is worth about $70-$100 street, that leaves a lot of room for: Production/testing loss, taxes, and profit. I would personally suggest a target tax price of $45/ounce. $4 profit for manufacturers (more than for tobacco), cuts the street price by 1/2. I personally think a lot of smokers would buy legally if they could. Most are not growing, but are purchasing....
It's just generally a bad idea to open this all up so a few people can legally mess with their own heads.
Like with Caffiene, Tobacco, Alchol, BASE jumping, and visiting other countries with different value systems, etc...?
My $.02: Most "Drugs" are bad, a few (Marijuana, Alchol, Coffee) are OK in moderation. It is not the "War on Drugs" that ever stops rampant use of a drug (say crack), but the apparent effects of the dipshits who use that drug - which scare the kids away from using that drug. (Also applies to Heroin, cocaine, Meth, and a few others.) What the "War on Drugs" does is equate all drugs as equally bad, therefore reducing the reluctance to try worse ones after the less bad ones turned out not to be as disasterous as reported. (Marijuanna 8000% more potent than when you tried it in the 70's. News at 11!)
The comparison to Alchol and tobacco are a good comparison: Alcholic substances such as beer are easy to make, and commonly not home-made. This is also true for Tobacco.
The Beer making process requires: (1) A Stove, (2) a Big Pot to sterilize water, (3) a Big Jug (such as a 5 gallon water bottle from the office cooler), (4) Wheat (and rice in the case of most american beer), (5) Yeast, and (6) Bottles - Most people still buy beer at the goverment taxed store. It's a case of speace effeciency and instanst gratification: To make Beer you have to Boil the water & Grain, Pour them in your office water cooler jug, let it cool, dump in the yeast, and wait a month. Then when the primary fermentation is done: You have to bottle and wait a few more months for the carbot content to go up. (OK, I left out the oxygen trap. If you don't use swing top bottles, you need a capper and caps - add $15)(Side note: Making harder alchol is also simple, take your primary fermentation of *whatever*, and simmer it using a condensing coil to capture & condense the alchol vapors into a bottle.)
In short, Alchol (and Good Beer especially) is extremely easy to make. However, you have to wait months for it, or get a carbon dioxide tank to force carbonization (and still must wait at least a month). You also need to have the space to dedicate to storing beer "in progress", and schedule your consumption to meet your demand. This is why the government taxed beer is so popular.
Making Tobacco (I imagine) is quite a similar process: You need (1) Land, and (2) a place to dry your tobacco. The steps for this are: Grow Tobacco, Harvest; Hang to dry. Then if you want cigarettes, roll them. This is also a process that takes months. I have read statistics that a pack of cigarettes costs less than $1 to make and transport. Since they generally are not found for less than $3 ($5 in DC, $8 in NY) the rest is profit and tax.
Even though making cigarettes costs a fraction of the price of buying them pre-rolled, everyone buys them in packs. (sometimes singles @$.25 ea.) Why, it's the same breakdown of resources (space and time) that get in the way of instant gratification.
As far as Marijuana goes, there is no reason that it could not be taxed at a high rate and still have a largely taxed consumption base. It is perfectly analagous to cigarettes. In addition, marijuanna legalization would free up a lot of resources for other purposes. (Although some resources would have to go for things like improved public transportation.) I suspect that Marijuanna is the most used "illegal" substance around (say 50%). What could be done if those people in jail for having it freed space in the system for harder drug pushers, or violent offenders? Or if the police chasing people for having Marijuana could be redeployed to chase down "minor crimes" - say the person who made my wife late for work Tuesday by stealing her bicycle?
The arguement that Marijuana would not be taxed, because everyone would grow it is a red herring. You can look at either the alchol or tobacco industry for a counter example. Freeing the resources spent on chasing down, prosecuting, and improsing Marijuana offenders would help society at large & help everyone.
Step 1: Set BIOS to Boot From CD Step 2: Demonstrate how to use a Linux-Live CD with a USB key to save personal files & settings. Step 3: Hand Out Documentation that matches the presentation you gave in step 2, as well as USB Keys Step 4: Leave a Linux-Live CD/DVD in each computer, also leave several copies of documentation & cd/dvds somewhere accessable to church elders Step 5: Be excommunicated for being communist (as demonstrated by using software lebre)
As in: The computer was working fine up to the day that the new & improved version of WGA was installed. The Computer had been working with the extra 1GB chip for months - including a month or so with the origional version of WGA. The Night that WGA updated itself (ok MS Update did it), the memory went very bad.
Yes, It could be coincidence. No fixing the memory did not solve the issue. Fixing the memory and reinstalling resolved the issue. What the hell do you mean that installing memory changes the computer enough that you need to re-license. That's fucking nuts, especially as every machine sold on the market tends to come with too little memory. I have every client who buys a Dell laptop, purchase a 1GB memory stick with it - just so it will run well.
I got the same alert on my Gatway laptop with the origional factory installed XP Home. I'm too cheap to use MS Office, so I use OpenOffice & other Openish type software. Suspiciously, the second time I rebooted after this "Update," I also found that a six month old 1 GB memory chip (that had been working properly) went bad. (As in can't boot to windows & a linux bootable cd memory test said the memory was fubared.)
When I replaced the memory & reinstalled the system from the restore CD, well then the same copy of XPHome was just fine with WGA.
Bit about K6 being great but chipsets sucked: OK, very likely - I seem to remember a lot of Via drivers. could well have killed the systems I saw.
Bit about mobile P3 not being Centrino, you only get half a mia-culpa. (Perhaps a "mia-") Centrino is the Pentium-M + Wifi chipset + someother intel chipset (I think). When we are talking about the Centrino Processor we are talking about the Pentium-M.
As I recall (and is not in the wikipedia - I'm not sure I would trust the entry anyhow...) The Pentium-M processor was a rework of the mobile P3. Specifically, I seem to recall that the mobile P4 used too much power & was not fast enough. Intel had an Israeli (sp?) design team do a crash design which largely upgraded the M-P3 and came out with the Pentium-M. (Which I think was a good processor for the time.)
All in all, good point about the K6-2/3 being good - even if it was effectively killed in much use by the Via chipsets it was usually paired with. Have a cup of juce. You only get half a cookie for the bit about the mobile P3 not being the Centrino processor: Centrio is the Processor + Intel WiFi + another chipset. The Processor (Pentium-M) is essentially another revision of the mobile P3 as far as I'm concerned. Good memory though.
I am an AMD fanboy, and I am happy that Intel is following the AMD way that has existed since about the 1.5GHz processors. (When AMD decided that heat may not be such a good thing.)
Lets get this straight: Low power consumption is a good thing. If Intel has gotten the point: we are happy - especially since new processor families tend to get faster than the old ones quickly.
The AMD K6-II and K6-IIIs blew chunks in comparison to the P3 processors (and weren't that good vs the P2s) Sorry, the preformance was just not there when it came to running Win2K. Everything was fine for win9x (aka dos) - but when the software bloated they could not deal all that well.
- Yes, I did run a 2K server on a K6-III maxed out on memory. You could do it, but it was not pretty - especially when you loaded the rest of Back Office.
The K7 series of processors came in and largely ate the lunch of the P3 series (because Intel could not clock them up at the time, and the P4 series. However, Intel still ate the lunch of AMD in the laptop sector - because the P3 Mobile (AKA Centrino) was a cooler, lower power processor.
About half way throught the K7 series, AMD decided videos of people cooking eggs on their chips (using a frying pan as a heat sink) was not such a good thing - and lowered the energy consumption of their chips. They also started getting business design wins. This was a "Good Thing." as they had now been competing on preformance as opposed to price for some time.
Still kicking butt in the desktop sector, and making inroads in the Server sector, AMD introuduced AM64 (or whatever it's called) which extended the x86 instruction set to include 64 bits instructions. This was compared to the Itanic chip, which was not compatible with any existing code - and expensive to boot. (Intel had decided to make a clean break with earlier chip designs.) AMD started making more inroads into the corporate sector, and server sectors as a result. They could also raise their chip prices because the AMD chips were really a better value, even at increased prices.
Intel had two responses to this: Start on a new chips & hold a fire sale. At this point, the best price/preformance chip is a PentiumD. No need for anyone to get one, unless they are playing games or doing scientific/media work, but there it is. Your P4 type dual core for $110, it just runs HOT. It's so energy intensive that AMD has not had to lower the prices on their chips. (even a dual core xeon is $200 while the cheapist AMD dual core is ~ $290 (all prices from newegg.com))
I am personally happy that there is a Core Duo for less than the price of an X2. It means that Dual core is really coming into the market. I'd be happier if it was really a desktop chip - eg. I didn't have to purchase an overpriced MB to go with it, or better yet could purchase it from a tier 1, II, III vendor. However with Core2, this will be the case shortly.
In short, Core2 is so good in terms of price/preformance - and with a X64 instruction set, that now AMD is going to be forced into a fire sale. To which I can only say - YES!!! I'm still pulling for AMD, but I pull even more for lower prices, and powerful, quiet machines.
Intel has dropped the other shoe, and is now looking like they will be on top again. AMD is still good, and will likely be a better deal as soon as they drop prices. Good for both of them. The preformance is high enough that most people won't care until Vista becomes widespread, but when this is the case I suspect that dual cores will explode in a mojor upgrade cycle. Until then, gamers have fun, scientests smile. It's still over kill for the rest of us.
Context is what you read. If you are goinhg to be a bigot and slander a group of people, you are a bigot who slanders a group of people. Most Catholics today would say that slavery, rape, and pillage are bad things. Most Germans today would say Gassing people for religon, and trying to take over the world by killing anyone who opposes them is are bad things.
The implication of the statement you made is that if you are currently a part of group X, which has dony Y bad things in the past, you must own up to Y - and are likely guilty of Y yourself (and should be proud of it). I thinks that's a bit of a slanderous posting.
It is not fair for the sons to carry the sins of the father. Further, in the case of Witches - it was not so much what you said was true, more that the witches got burned for political reasons and financial reasons. E.g. Babe has land you want & a wart - burn her and split the land with the church. Witch says that Jesus was not god, only a good person - drown her and take the spoils. And so forth.
"Ancient pagans fought wars, took slaves and slaughtered civilians and in all that thought the gods were backing them. If you claim any link with them you can not then disclaim their bad side."
If we change a few words:
"Ancient (or Medieval if you prefer) Christians, took slaves and slaughtered civilians and in all that thought that god was backing them. If you claim any link with them you can not then disclaim their bad side."
Amazing how people don't see the logic of their arguement cuts both ways...
In my experience, Paypal does not have a track record for protecting the purchaser of an item. The last time I got ripped off, Paypal basicially said "you have to wait a few months before doing anything", followed by "Take it up with your credit card issuer."
On the otherhand, perhaps Ebay is afraid that Gbuy will protect the consumer in a way that violates paypals pledge to protect fraudsters...
One is a factory installed (Gatway laptop) with winXP home. (when I came in this morning it was frozen with a warning that the software was fake. On about the sixth time I was able to reboot, got the new WGA - which removed the mesage, then no more rebooting sucessfully. (BSOD, I'll work on it after I back up the last weeks work.))
The other machine is a Homebrew (Asus, AMD 1700ish, 1024MB) - I suspect the via ide drivers....
Take a look at google for WGA and crash... This is not an uncommon problem. Apparently a large number of non-ms ide drivers (Via, Nvidia,...) cause the machine to entirely bork. You have to get MS apprived drivers, copy them to the borked machine, boot in safe mode, wave a dead chicken, dance.....
We stopped listening a long time ago. Suing people for using technologies you claim were in your product, then telling them they should use your technologies does not win friends or clients.
Slashdot Mirror
If I remember correctly, the estimate for running a wire is about $100 for the first wire to a location, and an additional $10 for each additional wire to the same location.
Now this assumes that you have relatively new type construction. E.g. Drywall where you can put small holes in it and fish the wire through. Older type construction (say Plaster on Lathe in The US...), or Italian type construction (Plaster on Cinder-Block for interior walls? Gimme a break.) will cost significanty more.
If you are willing to put your wires on the wall with clips so that everyone sees it, It costs almost nothing. Except for the wife's continual noises about "ugly".
I suppose the real question is one of ease: At commodity prices, a Wireless Base unit (802.11g) and card (802.11g) will cover most homes and work well for everything but streaming video - for $100. It will take something like a half-hour to setup. Additional client cards are under $50.
In my house (US, built in 1909) and similar ones, you would have to cut a channel in the plaster from your patch-panel to every drop point. This would take a few hours with a circular saw and carbon cutting blade. Then someone will have to drill through all of the petrified joists. Then the wire would have to be pulled (another 15 minutes/drop). Then it would cost several hundred (to over a thousand) to cover it back up. In some homes you will have to do this anyhow, as the wall construction is Plaster over Wire Mesh, over Joists. (Think no wireless reception through it.) However, putting a wired network in an old house is expensive. Putting one in a new home costs less, but still more than WiFi.
my $.02
My Representative would make you tube illegal;)
oh, wait, I live in DC and therefore am not enough of a citizen to have voting representatives. Never mine we have more people than Rhode Island, or Montana.
The Lt. Govenor, Michael ("My Opposition is made of bad mud-slingers, but I like puppies")Steele, is also running for Senate. I think it is as much about that race as any other.
... But it was the Evil Republicans who *stole* the election with the voting machines.
Here is the part that gets me:
In the last round of elections, we all said that DieBold and cohorts stole the election with electronic voting machines. Granted, we all know that we could hack the machines with our left testicle (Women Too)
Here we have a guy (Whom I do not like) stating that the state should go to computer-read Optical Scan Ballots. (Read: *Computers* with a PAPER TRAIL) Why are we not supporting the bozo with the right idea. The Election will always be between a douchbag and a bloody tampon because that's what it takes to run. (Southpark reference) - but when one gets the right idea (e.g. paper trail), we should support it.
Life changes. A paper trail doesn't. Get one: Priceless.
This message should in no way reflect that optical scan ballots cannot be manipulated. (Just send the wrong type of pencil to the precincts who will vote for Y.) But the paper trail can be inspected for any grand irregularities.
The statement "Vinyl has better audio quality" has to be qualified. Heavily. In most cases it is effectively not true, either because the audio equipment is too crap for you to tell the difference - or the record is worn and has lost fidelity. (If you own a record player (and Microphone/neeedle) that costs under $250: it's not High Fidelity.)
If you have audio equipment that cost more than $3000 (purchased in the last 5 years), AND you know how to balance your mm/mc arm, and you go to classical (perhaps Jazz) concerts so you know what the music sounds like, you can ignore this post.
Boring details below.
It is true that as a medium, a LP record (or even a 45) inherently has truer fidelity than a CD. However this means that the records have a truer version of the music than the CD. (Some qualifications, assumes that the origional recording is done in analogue, or at a higher sampling bitrate than a CD. Decent transfer process, etc...)
To go from "Records are better recordings of music than CDs" to "Vinyl has better audio Quality" in the sense of the statement made: (e.g. it sounds better) is a bit of a leap. This leap requires High Fidelity equipment.
High Fidelity Equipment means 1) Good Audio Equipment (Speakers & Amplifier), 1a) Including good isolation for the record player (vibration: Bad), 2) A Good record Player, 2b)A good Mic and (unworn) needle, 2c) Correct wieghting for the playback arm for the needle; 3) An unworn / undamaged record. Some people have this equipment (not many), and the ability to set it up (pay to have it setup) correctly. Most people do not have this equipment.
For example: You will *may* hear better sound from a $250+ Amp with $400+ Speakers and a $250 Turntable/mic. (I'm assuming that amps have gotten much better than they used to be. In any case, you will need a minimum of $1000 in sterio equipment to hear an difference from Vinyl to CD. (True, and fake, audiophiles will say I'm wrong: it costs more.)
The USB Record Player I have seen was about $90. This means you can play records, not in High Fidelity. You need to have High Fidelity to hear the difference between a CD and a Record. Using your computer to play music pretty much rules you out. And what the hell, Ipods have a tactile feel too.
So effectively, the origional post is wrong. Records have the same crap sound as CDs, in most cases. If you can hear the difference between a Record and a CD, probabily your record is damaged or your needle is. Either that or you have a ground loop on your mm/mc that you think sounds nice.
Bite me: I'm Jealous because I used to have a music system where I could hear the difference between a good LP and a good CD (Say DSOTM), now I don't
Duh, let me count the reasons why!
1) There is a commercial version of Open Office: It's called Star Office
2) The best a commercial product can hope to do against MS is go out of business.
2a) Or be bought by google
3) Did I mention that Open Office was the Free Version of Star Office ($70 ish) from Sun?
3b) Did you know that you could purchase Open Office for $70 ish, and get features like: Real Fonts, a commercial spell checker, the ability to import MS Scripts, and more...
Seriously, how many commercial office suites have you seen that have gone out of business in the last several years? Let me jog your memory.
(Rant-On)
Origionally (In the Days of DOS), there were the big three: Word-Perfect Office; Microsoft Office, and Lotus Office. If I remember right (and probably don't): Word-Perfect Office (Also known as Corel, Novel, or what-the-hell) starred Word Perfect, and other me-too programs. Lotus Office (Who knows what it was called back then?) Starred 123, and other me-too programs. Microsoft Office had only me-too programs.
When Windows came out, WordPerfect was the 800 pound gorilla that slipped on the (supplied) bananna peel of not converting to Windows - it was still a DOS program. Microsoft had updated it's me-too programs so that they were good, and (I suspect) first to market as windows programs. At this point in time, many people (Read Businesses) still purchased WordPerfect, and 123 as seperate programs. Microsoft offered a "Windows Native Office Suite" (at a lower price) of me-too (aka: also-ran) programs at a low price, and started eating market share like no tomorrow.
Today, the world runs on Microsoft Office. Period. Lotus office was effectively killed by predatory Windows pricing to computer manufacturers. (You can sell it, but we will raise your cost for Windows from the OEM price of $25 to the consumer price of $100. OK, I pulled the numbers out of my rear, but you get the idea.) [Personally, I like WP's reveal codes, and am likely still better at 123 than Excel, and loved the Lotus Smart Suite Organizational Trays. However, I also think the best version of Word was 5.1 - so there.] No only does everyone run MSOffice, but Corel tried a semi-commercial version of the WordPerfect Suite a few years ago: ($25 for the suite - no Tech support calls - use the forums.) The only thing that happened was they lost more market share. Lotus Smart Suite has effectively disappeared: (Hey look, you can find the Milennium edition for $25 - and I think that's the last time it was updated;) The only reason many people made new Office suites (or componants) recently is for the web.
Let me tell you, Star Office / Open Office was made an open source project because Sun want's to try stopping Microsoft from using Office as a monopoly cash cow. Star Office was a third tier office suite that blew chunks for everything but an amazing scripting ability. (Yes, I used it. As a user, not a programmer, I would rather use the worst componant in every categlory from the big three suites. Ok, a little over stated, but...) Sun bought it because they could afford it, and could afford to make it open source. (e.g: Very few IP issues). It now is an open source project because they want to hurt MS, and it's not really working. Open Office is for everyone who does not need support, and does not want to pirate MS Office. Star Office is for people who need a "supported" office suite that is cross platform. (I don't know. I haven't really heard of any big installations. but it's there if you need it) The Star Office also includes a commercial spell checker, a MS VBA translator/importer, and some other features (like real fonts) that are nice to have. See the Wiki for more. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice)
So you want to create a semi-commercial version of Open Office? Get a clue
(Rant-Off)
--
Mebby I kin't spell, but omtimes I get rilled up & lookoat: I sure do speel.
If you RTFA, this is $300 for a HDTV case, a quiet PSU, and a GF6 video integrated Motherboard. The motherboard is an ASIS a8n vm csm. ($78 @ newegg) The case is some sort of Custom HDTV case, not found with easy trawling, lets assume $100 + $60 for the "Ultra Silent" PSU.
0 -939BB-A8NVN/installCD/Lx8100-939BB-A8NVN_InstallC D.htm
Not a bad deal for the $300 barebone. Especially as they configure the Linux for non easily installed stuff.
Linux Install CD: http://www.lixsystems.net/lix/product_files/LX810
(Coincedentally, also the site that is selling the units)
The cans may not be the same: On My Block of Washington, DC - the government (Which spends $$ spraying for moskuitoes and theoritically fining people for having breeding-cups in their yards) hands out trash cans without drainage holes. This means when is rains a few inches the night that a full trash can goes out - the cans don't get emptied because the G-Men can't lift the cans.
My "Identical" Cans have drainage holes drilled in the bottom. Yes I would like to get them back. Further - I drilled holes in the bottom of the neighbors cans in each side: I would like them to get them back.
However, NFW the goverment is going to use RFID to figure out whose cans are whose, as the cost of sending out someone to check costs more than the can.
Or did my recollection go down?
I seem to remember the Budget Box at $600, the Hot rod $1300, and the God box costing unholy amounts of money.
Otherwise, we all knew that the core2 duo would get the nod: Low Power, fast, x86x64. (does the last one sound like an old memory chip?)
$.02
Just a perpetual thought.
http://tomsnetworking.com/2006/08/11/qnap_ts101_na s_review/
r rent-router/
or lok at a review of the asus unit here: http://torrentfreak.com/review-the-wireless-bitto
It has been pointed out that Beer is made from Malted barely. Not wheat. The correction is correct, I seem to remember purchasing Tins of Malted Mixture to make beer - only toasting grains, or spooging (Putting fruit in cheese-cloth in the mix) for modifying the taste.
More likely, the reason the US became more sucessful was not that we came searching for gold rather than god. (Most of the origional 13 colonies were relegous havens: Maryland for Catholics (England had gone Anglican), Pennsylvania was known for Quackers, various Protistant demoninations in New England, and so on.... Although a few were penal colonies (South Carolina))
I think the real reason the US became prosperous relative to Latin countries was a combination of 1) Enough Whiteys showing up from Europe to make a BIG population. (Say, enough to wipe out all the indiginous people.) Said population allready being "up to date" in technology & needing to work in cities. 2) A relatively liberal government (Both the British & the American ones). and 3) Natural Resources.
$.02
So why do you conflate Marijuana with other illegal drugs in the following section. IF you desired, you could also link tobacco and caffeine as gateway drugs. Alchol is also a gateway drug as it's illegal when you are under the age of X. (21 in the US.)
A lot of people do underestimate the subversive (on the person's psyche and ability to function as a productive member of society) effect that "harder" drugs have on people, since they're only really familiar with recreational cannibis. Not to mention the permanent damage that a drug like opium or heroin can do to a person.
So what if people are talking about cannabis. Perhaps the majority of people are talking about cannabis when they are talking about legalizing drugs? It is the most used "illegal" drug in the US, as well as most parts of the world.
Another problem is this: if narcotics were legalized, who would end up being the distributors? Likely the cartels and networks of dealers that have been selling it illegally for years. You know, the people that cut it with strychnine and analogs so they can inflate their volume and therefore profits, at the expense of the health and safety of their users. Or the brutal cartels that, if they were operating in the same sphere as legitimate businesses, would make every single corrupt corporation, combined in some voltron-like fashion, look like the local, friendly mom & pop.
Likely, the distributors of Marijuana would be the Cigarette companies which allready have the equipment to MASS Produce cigarettes - and consiquently would drive anyone else out of business. Harder drugs would likely be produced by the current drug companies. I doubt anyone with a criminal past would be approved as a "Distributor." Point of sale would likely be things like liquor stores & cigarette vendors. If harder drugs were legalized as well (unlikely) the point of sale would likely be Liquor stores, or Pharmacies.
Even if they did play fair and there way governmental oversight, the damage to the user would still be there. Furthermore, testing narcotics for purity, etc is somewhat time-consuming and actually consumes a portion of the drug, which would raise the costs phenomenally (provided the government did not make the distributors eat the costs. That would be a toss-up).
I beleive this is currently the case for Alchol, and Tobacco. Since most of the cost of drugs is "Hazard" markup. (Chances of being caught & put in prison) the cost issue is silly. Case in point: We can assume a similar cost for making Marijuana cigarettes as for making tobacco cigarettes - $1 for growing, packaging, and transport. Considering a US Pack of Cigarettes is about one ounce (27g?) and that weight of Marijuanna is worth about $70-$100 street, that leaves a lot of room for: Production/testing loss, taxes, and profit. I would personally suggest a target tax price of $45/ounce. $4 profit for manufacturers (more than for tobacco), cuts the street price by 1/2. I personally think a lot of smokers would buy legally if they could. Most are not growing, but are purchasing....
It's just generally a bad idea to open this all up so a few people can legally mess with their own heads.
Like with Caffiene, Tobacco, Alchol, BASE jumping, and visiting other countries with different value systems, etc...?
My $.02: Most "Drugs" are bad, a few (Marijuana, Alchol, Coffee) are OK in moderation. It is not the "War on Drugs" that ever stops rampant use of a drug (say crack), but the apparent effects of the dipshits who use that drug - which scare the kids away from using that drug. (Also applies to Heroin, cocaine, Meth, and a few others.) What the "War on Drugs" does is equate all drugs as equally bad, therefore reducing the reluctance to try worse ones after the less bad ones turned out not to be as disasterous as reported. (Marijuanna 8000% more potent than when you tried it in the 70's. News at 11!)
The comparison to Alchol and tobacco are a good comparison: Alcholic substances such as beer are easy to make, and commonly not home-made. This is also true for Tobacco.
The Beer making process requires: (1) A Stove, (2) a Big Pot to sterilize water, (3) a Big Jug (such as a 5 gallon water bottle from the office cooler), (4) Wheat (and rice in the case of most american beer), (5) Yeast, and (6) Bottles - Most people still buy beer at the goverment taxed store. It's a case of speace effeciency and instanst gratification: To make Beer you have to Boil the water & Grain, Pour them in your office water cooler jug, let it cool, dump in the yeast, and wait a month. Then when the primary fermentation is done: You have to bottle and wait a few more months for the carbot content to go up. (OK, I left out the oxygen trap. If you don't use swing top bottles, you need a capper and caps - add $15)(Side note: Making harder alchol is also simple, take your primary fermentation of *whatever*, and simmer it using a condensing coil to capture & condense the alchol vapors into a bottle.)
In short, Alchol (and Good Beer especially) is extremely easy to make. However, you have to wait months for it, or get a carbon dioxide tank to force carbonization (and still must wait at least a month). You also need to have the space to dedicate to storing beer "in progress", and schedule your consumption to meet your demand. This is why the government taxed beer is so popular.
Making Tobacco (I imagine) is quite a similar process: You need (1) Land, and (2) a place to dry your tobacco. The steps for this are: Grow Tobacco, Harvest; Hang to dry. Then if you want cigarettes, roll them. This is also a process that takes months. I have read statistics that a pack of cigarettes costs less than $1 to make and transport. Since they generally are not found for less than $3 ($5 in DC, $8 in NY) the rest is profit and tax.
Even though making cigarettes costs a fraction of the price of buying them pre-rolled, everyone buys them in packs. (sometimes singles @$.25 ea.) Why, it's the same breakdown of resources (space and time) that get in the way of instant gratification.
As far as Marijuana goes, there is no reason that it could not be taxed at a high rate and still have a largely taxed consumption base. It is perfectly analagous to cigarettes. In addition, marijuanna legalization would free up a lot of resources for other purposes. (Although some resources would have to go for things like improved public transportation.) I suspect that Marijuanna is the most used "illegal" substance around (say 50%). What could be done if those people in jail for having it freed space in the system for harder drug pushers, or violent offenders? Or if the police chasing people for having Marijuana could be redeployed to chase down "minor crimes" - say the person who made my wife late for work Tuesday by stealing her bicycle?
The arguement that Marijuana would not be taxed, because everyone would grow it is a red herring. You can look at either the alchol or tobacco industry for a counter example. Freeing the resources spent on chasing down, prosecuting, and improsing Marijuana offenders would help society at large & help everyone.
No, try this one:
How to fix computer problems in five easy steps:
Step 1: Set BIOS to Boot From CD
Step 2: Demonstrate how to use a Linux-Live CD with a USB key to save personal files & settings.
Step 3: Hand Out Documentation that matches the presentation you gave in step 2, as well as USB Keys
Step 4: Leave a Linux-Live CD/DVD in each computer, also leave several copies of documentation & cd/dvds somewhere accessable to church elders
Step 5: Be excommunicated for being communist (as demonstrated by using software lebre)
As in: The computer was working fine up to the day that the new & improved version of WGA was installed. The Computer had been working with the extra 1GB chip for months - including a month or so with the origional version of WGA. The Night that WGA updated itself (ok MS Update did it), the memory went very bad.
Yes, It could be coincidence. No fixing the memory did not solve the issue. Fixing the memory and reinstalling resolved the issue. What the hell do you mean that installing memory changes the computer enough that you need to re-license. That's fucking nuts, especially as every machine sold on the market tends to come with too little memory. I have every client who buys a Dell laptop, purchase a 1GB memory stick with it - just so it will run well.
Irony.
So where you from?
I got the same alert on my Gatway laptop with the origional factory installed XP Home. I'm too cheap to use MS Office, so I use OpenOffice & other Openish type software. Suspiciously, the second time I rebooted after this "Update," I also found that a six month old 1 GB memory chip (that had been working properly) went bad. (As in can't boot to windows & a linux bootable cd memory test said the memory was fubared.)
When I replaced the memory & reinstalled the system from the restore CD, well then the same copy of XPHome was just fine with WGA.
Kudos Microsoft;)
Bit about K6 being great but chipsets sucked: OK, very likely - I seem to remember a lot of Via drivers. could well have killed the systems I saw.
Bit about mobile P3 not being Centrino, you only get half a mia-culpa. (Perhaps a "mia-") Centrino is the Pentium-M + Wifi chipset + someother intel chipset (I think). When we are talking about the Centrino Processor we are talking about the Pentium-M.
As I recall (and is not in the wikipedia - I'm not sure I would trust the entry anyhow...) The Pentium-M processor was a rework of the mobile P3. Specifically, I seem to recall that the mobile P4 used too much power & was not fast enough. Intel had an Israeli (sp?) design team do a crash design which largely upgraded the M-P3 and came out with the Pentium-M. (Which I think was a good processor for the time.)
All in all, good point about the K6-2/3 being good - even if it was effectively killed in much use by the Via chipsets it was usually paired with. Have a cup of juce. You only get half a cookie for the bit about the mobile P3 not being the Centrino processor: Centrio is the Processor + Intel WiFi + another chipset. The Processor (Pentium-M) is essentially another revision of the mobile P3 as far as I'm concerned. Good memory though.
$.01 & Mia-
I am an AMD fanboy, and I am happy that Intel is following the AMD way that has existed since about the 1.5GHz processors. (When AMD decided that heat may not be such a good thing.)
Lets get this straight: Low power consumption is a good thing. If Intel has gotten the point: we are happy - especially since new processor families tend to get faster than the old ones quickly.
The AMD K6-II and K6-IIIs blew chunks in comparison to the P3 processors (and weren't that good vs the P2s) Sorry, the preformance was just not there when it came to running Win2K. Everything was fine for win9x (aka dos) - but when the software bloated they could not deal all that well.
- Yes, I did run a 2K server on a K6-III maxed out on memory. You could do it, but it was not pretty - especially when you loaded the rest of Back Office.
The K7 series of processors came in and largely ate the lunch of the P3 series (because Intel could not clock them up at the time, and the P4 series. However, Intel still ate the lunch of AMD in the laptop sector - because the P3 Mobile (AKA Centrino) was a cooler, lower power processor.
About half way throught the K7 series, AMD decided videos of people cooking eggs on their chips (using a frying pan as a heat sink) was not such a good thing - and lowered the energy consumption of their chips. They also started getting business design wins. This was a "Good Thing." as they had now been competing on preformance as opposed to price for some time.
Still kicking butt in the desktop sector, and making inroads in the Server sector, AMD introuduced AM64 (or whatever it's called) which extended the x86 instruction set to include 64 bits instructions. This was compared to the Itanic chip, which was not compatible with any existing code - and expensive to boot. (Intel had decided to make a clean break with earlier chip designs.) AMD started making more inroads into the corporate sector, and server sectors as a result. They could also raise their chip prices because the AMD chips were really a better value, even at increased prices.
Intel had two responses to this: Start on a new chips & hold a fire sale. At this point, the best price/preformance chip is a PentiumD. No need for anyone to get one, unless they are playing games or doing scientific/media work, but there it is. Your P4 type dual core for $110, it just runs HOT. It's so energy intensive that AMD has not had to lower the prices on their chips. (even a dual core xeon is $200 while the cheapist AMD dual core is ~ $290 (all prices from newegg.com))
I am personally happy that there is a Core Duo for less than the price of an X2. It means that Dual core is really coming into the market. I'd be happier if it was really a desktop chip - eg. I didn't have to purchase an overpriced MB to go with it, or better yet could purchase it from a tier 1, II, III vendor. However with Core2, this will be the case shortly.
In short, Core2 is so good in terms of price/preformance - and with a X64 instruction set, that now AMD is going to be forced into a fire sale. To which I can only say - YES!!! I'm still pulling for AMD, but I pull even more for lower prices, and powerful, quiet machines.
Intel has dropped the other shoe, and is now looking like they will be on top again. AMD is still good, and will likely be a better deal as soon as they drop prices. Good for both of them. The preformance is high enough that most people won't care until Vista becomes widespread, but when this is the case I suspect that dual cores will explode in a mojor upgrade cycle. Until then, gamers have fun, scientests smile. It's still over kill for the rest of us.
$.04 - this post took more time than most.
Context is what you read. If you are goinhg to be a bigot and slander a group of people, you are a bigot who slanders a group of people. Most Catholics today would say that slavery, rape, and pillage are bad things. Most Germans today would say Gassing people for religon, and trying to take over the world by killing anyone who opposes them is are bad things.
The implication of the statement you made is that if you are currently a part of group X, which has dony Y bad things in the past, you must own up to Y - and are likely guilty of Y yourself (and should be proud of it). I thinks that's a bit of a slanderous posting.
It is not fair for the sons to carry the sins of the father. Further, in the case of Witches - it was not so much what you said was true, more that the witches got burned for political reasons and financial reasons. E.g. Babe has land you want & a wart - burn her and split the land with the church. Witch says that Jesus was not god, only a good person - drown her and take the spoils. And so forth.
Lets see, you said:
"Ancient pagans fought wars, took slaves and slaughtered civilians and in all that thought the gods were backing them. If you claim any link with them you can not then disclaim their bad side."
If we change a few words:
"Ancient (or Medieval if you prefer) Christians, took slaves and slaughtered civilians and in all that thought that god was backing them. If you claim any link with them you can not then disclaim their bad side."
Amazing how people don't see the logic of their arguement cuts both ways...
In my experience, Paypal does not have a track record for protecting the purchaser of an item. The last time I got ripped off, Paypal basicially said "you have to wait a few months before doing anything", followed by "Take it up with your credit card issuer."
On the otherhand, perhaps Ebay is afraid that Gbuy will protect the consumer in a way that violates paypals pledge to protect fraudsters...
One is a factory installed (Gatway laptop) with winXP home. (when I came in this morning it was frozen with a warning that the software was fake. On about the sixth time I was able to reboot, got the new WGA - which removed the mesage, then no more rebooting sucessfully. (BSOD, I'll work on it after I back up the last weeks work.))
... This is not an uncommon problem. Apparently a large number of non-ms ide drivers (Via, Nvidia, ...) cause the machine to entirely bork. You have to get MS apprived drivers, copy them to the borked machine, boot in safe mode, wave a dead chicken, dance.....
The other machine is a Homebrew (Asus, AMD 1700ish, 1024MB) - I suspect the via ide drivers....
Take a look at google for WGA and crash
We stopped listening a long time ago. Suing people for using technologies you claim were in your product, then telling them they should use your technologies does not win friends or clients.