Well, for whatever it's worth, I've installed a LOT of wireless routers for people over the years - and I learned to generally AVOID Belkin.
If you've got one that's working well for you, great. But on the whole, they were known for having sub-standard firmware in their devices. I remember, for example, when 802.11g was the "latest and greatest thing", Belkin had a "g" capable router that had a major bug in the firmware, preventing any "g" devices from connecting to it if it was configured to also allow backwards compatibility with "b" devices.
They did release a firmware update to correct that, but you still had a relatively weak/limited set of configuration options in the product.
I also recall finding Belkin wi-fi routers to have worse-than-average range.
People seemed to generally like Buffalo because they were priced a little bit lower than the competition, especially on things like wireless access points (which seem to generally be a big ripoff to this day, since they cost 2x to 3x more than a full-blown router, which can be programmed to function as an access point anyway!). That and they gave good performance for the money, and had better than average web-based interfaces.
Actually, I agree with you, that electric cars are where we should be headed.
My point was, more, that the "early adopters" of such technologies who are vastly over-paying for them, vs. real savings they'll achieve from the purchase, should stop throwing around false justifications. Anyone can play the "game" of cherry-picking indirect reasons why their choice makes them more "environmentally friendly".
IMHO, there's nothing wrong with purchasing a new technology like hybrids or an electric car, if you're doing so because you wish to invest your money into future R&D for that line of products, or simply because you like to get the chance to be among the first to use the new tech. There's no need for buyers to spread false or dubious claims that try to place them higher on some moral or environmentally-aware pedestal.
As for the step-down transformers, I wasn't aware they were quite THAT efficient. That is pretty good, but there's still SOME measure of loss there.
Laugh now, but when your iTunes music store has a "cattle herding tunes" section on it, where you can download rattlesnake sounds and cowboy whispers, it'll be a goldmine with the farming community!
This is exactly why it gets insane, quickly, trying to justify a particular type of energy usage as having "less overall environmental impact" than alternatives.
Yes, one can argue that refining gas and transporting it doubles the amount of energy it requires over simply what your car winds up using.
But one could also argue that electricity suffers the same fate, when you consider the losses due to resistance of transmission lines, step-down transformers, and losses incurred as energy is stored, short-term, in batteries before *finally* being used by a vehicle.
Then you *still* haven't factored in overall impact of such things as transmissions that wear out more quickly than electric powertrains, vs. batteries that wear out and have to be re-manufactured. (What chemicals go into that whole process, and how "clean" is it?)
Then you start wondering about the pollution levels of gasoline powered vehicles vs. electric cars, but have to balance that against pollution levels generated by the power plants generating the electricity. If they use nuclear power, how does THAT factor in, long-term, as far as ability to safely dispose of the radioactive waste? How much energy is used in transportation of the spent fuel rods and such?
Oh, and did we factor in groundwater pollution from leaking fuel tanks at gas stations, because that's probably an issue too? And how much gas is used driving to gas stations, JUST to fuel up a car, vs. electric cars that could recharge at home and save those trips?
See what I mean? Ultimately, I think the *only* sensible metric is figuring out which option costs you, the consumer, the least to go with.
Bickering about whether or not I meant "Democracy" to mean a literal Democracy is really beside the point here. (People constantly refer to America as a "Democracy", understanding that most of us know we don't *really* all have direct input into each and every issue that's voted on. If I more accurately said "Democratic Republic" in my original message, nothing else would have changed.....
The point is, our representatives didn't even TRY to look out for the best interests of the people! If they had, they would have demanded some research into the reasoning that $700 billion was the "right" dollar amount to solve our problems. If they had, they wouldn't have changed their votes from "no" to "yes" over such trivial additional to the bill as giving Hollywood movie producers tax credits on their production expenses, or giving makers of a special type of toy arrow a tax credit!
Obviously, I already "know what to do" when it comes to voting out the representatives who didn't do their jobs properly. That's a given, and thankfully - there are many web sites already giving people complete lists of who voted for and against this bailout.
I realize that 300 million of us can't realistically be expected to deal with the gritty details of proposed legislation on a day to day basis. That's not what I'm upset about!
The problem in THIS case is, we're talking about legislation spending $700 BILLION taxpayer dollars (eventually wound up over $100 billion HIGHER than that!), and yet the Senate simply rubber-stamped it on through without so much as a BIT of concern that maybe this wasn't well researched or thought out before being proposed! THEN, they went on to do something that's really not their job at ALL.... They made a concerted effort to do anything they could do to sell the bill to the House, including tweaking and adjusting it left and right to cater to whichever special interest would tempt a particular individual to switch a "no" vote to a "yes"!
How can you sit there and claim you believe "this bill was a good idea" when among other things, it gives millions of dollars to toy makers making a specific type of arrow for a kid's bow, gives perks to businesses so they can buy employees bicycles or pay for their maintenance if they ride them to work, and gives special tax breaks to makers of wool clothing items?? NONE of this addresses the core problem at all! None of this helps fix the supposed "financial meltdown and collapse" that we were supposed to see if this wasn't passed!
Over on Forbes.com, they interviewed a financial analyst and asked him how they came up with the $700 billion figure as the proper amount to rescue the economy. He admitted that it wasn't because of any study or mathematical formula they used. Rather, they just picked $700 billion because it was a nice, big number!
Anyone thinking all of THIS was "good politics" is a damn fool!
What I find MOST incredible about this whole bailout, is the fact that nationwide polls of the general populace indicated between 70% and 75% were AGAINST the legislation, yet the Senate passed it through with FLYING COLORS, and House of "Representatives" were swayed to voting for it in a matter of only a few days. All it really took was throwing in a few key financial incentives and bonuses to the appropriate special interests, and some empty promises by potential presidents to be.
The whole time, these "Representatives" were being flooded with demands from the American people NOT to vote for the bailout - but they turned a deaf ear to everyone, and made bold claims like "I may not be re-elected because of this, but I'm confident I did the right thing for America's future anyway." One moron said he changed his vote from NO to YES, simply because "I talked with potential president to be, Obama, and he personally assured me he would enact legislation after his election that's in alignment with what I want to see." (WHAT?!? You were VERBALLY promised some B.S. by a guy who MAY or MAY NOT become president, so that's more important to you than listening to the people who elected you and trusted you to represent their wishes?!)
When HUGE taxpayer expenditures like this are voted through and signed into law in less than a week, despite 3 out of 4 Americans being strongly against them - it's clear we no longer live in a Democracy at all! This seems like as good a reason for an overthrow of our government as what we dealt with back around 1776! Yet people will not only sit back and accept it, but probably not even vote in protest for a 3rd. party like the Libertarians. (Incidentally, Bob Barr has been speaking out against this bailout the whole time, unlike our Democratic or Republican contenders. The man gets MY vote for that reason alone. At least he's in support of the will of the PEOPLE still!)
Actually, I can relate to that guy and his feelings... even if perhaps, it wasn't worded as well as it could be.
I'm divorced and have my kid full-time, so there's no other parent for her to go to, and there aren't even any kids in the neighborhood she can really count on playing with. (Most of them are only around every other weekend or so, since they're part of divorced families too.) Since she's an only child, I'm pretty much her only source of entertainment, when she's not playing by herself.
It gets old QUICKLY.... and to retain my sanity, I have to try to encourage her to keep herself occupied with her own activities as much as possible. Sure, we do lots of stuff together. I even taught her how to play chess. (She's only 6 so she's not exactly good at it, but she knows all the basic rules of how the pieces move, which is a start!) But there are times when I'm on the computer and she wants to do the same thing, so she gets on the other one. Currently, her only web sites of interest are ones with Flash based games, like Playhouse Disney or Nick Jr. I wish somebody would offer another alternative to those, though. I don't like how in order to get any educational value from a site, it seems like you have to accept the commercial characters and branding they bundle with it.
Honestly, I ignored Facebook for a long time (just like I have MySpace), because I figured as a guy in my late 30's, it wouldn't have that much to offer me. I'm not all that thrilled by the idea of seeing how many "friends" I can collect up on my account for "bragging rights", and some of the HTML disasters people create as pages are eye-sores.
But I finally gave in, after person after person told me to "check out their Facebook page" for this or that reason, and created my own account.
It was amazing how many people started contacting me who I haven't seen since as long ago as grade school! It really did put me back in touch with 5 or 6 good friends I'd totally lost track of.
So "fad" or not, I can vouch for Facebook serving a useful purpose, at least as long as it's "in vogue" for people to sign on and use it.
At least things have gotten a little better in recent years. I recall working as a tech. for a couple of different "mom and pop" type computer stores in the early to mid 1990's, when everybody was building "house brand" generic clones for their customers.
The typical mini-tower case with power supply was purchased for about $40 total, and always came straight from China, with the cheapest sheet metal possible. (Amazingly, many of these shipped with respectably decent power supplies, too, depending on who you bought from. But then, it's also worth remembering that you needed less wattage for most systems built at that time.) It was almost impossible to assemble one of those without slicing up at least one finger or thumb, since none of the metal edges inside the case were sanded down or rounded off. (That would make it cost more!)
Huh? This has practically nothing to do with the original article!
Apple had at least 3 or 4 revisions of the power supply used in the PowerMac G5 towers, due to problems with them creating electrical hums or buzzes, which were making them unsuitable for recording studio type applications. The Mac Pro, although a revamped system, probably had a few power supply issues as well.
They use a pretty big power supply (around 1000 watts), and it's inevitable that at least a few of them had manufacturing defects that could cause them to burn up and "almost start a fire". It's certainly not a common issue with them, though. If *any* large power supply burns up, you'll get some nasty smells coming from it, from things like popped electrolytic capacitors and melted plastic on wires in them.
I have to admit that I'm not much of a gambler (or even a card player), but I took a look at one of the online casinos recently, after they sent me a REALLY slick marketing packet in the mail.
It was a full color glossy "magazine" with real articles and everything, but essentially an advertisement to visit an online casino, with a free $50 credit to get started.
I figured, "$50 to get started? I'll give it a shot, and if nothing else, I'll just cash out and collect my $50 or whatever is left of it after I lose a round or two!"
Well, after installing their software on the included CD and going through their lengthy registration process, I picked a blackjack game and gave it a try.
That's when I realized there was a LOT of fine print, beyond what the advertisement promised. Yes, you could place bets with your complimentary $50 credit, but money you won over and above that was not possible to convert into a real payout. You could only use it for further gambling. You had to deposit actual funds before you could withdraw any winnings!
At that point, I just played until I lost my "$50" and logged off, never to use the garbage again.
I've experienced the exact opposite before, just like the other person who posted a reply to you.
I think it has more to do with the type of neighborhood a particular store is located in.
WalMart stores around here tend to mostly be in neighborhoods bordering on higher-crime areas. People are constantly trying to return things to them that weren't bought there to begin with, or maybe were shoplifted from them earlier in the day.
When you have a legitimate return, you're made to feel like a criminal yourself, until you prove otherwise. I had one pair of jeans to return one time, and the clerk spent several minutes looking over every inch of them to make sure nothing was torn, stained or slightly damaged in any way. After all THAT, she still called over someone from that dept. to make sure it was a pair they currently stocked, and to verify the price on my receipt was still correct (no sales running currently or anything that might mean I'd get back more than what they were selling them for that day). Pain in the butt....
Yep... but I believe I paid close to $200 for that same card back when it was the "latest and greatest" thing. (The big deal about it for me at the time was, it was still offered in an AGP version, and things were just starting to go to PCIe. I didn't want to buy a whole new motherboard just to upgrade my video card, so it seemed like a good alternative.)
This is SO true! At least where I work now, they generally have a policy that "If the purchase is under $1000, and you're among the privileged few holding a corporate credit card, you can go ahead and order it on your own. Just turn in the paperwork with notations about what/who it's for, and the cost center it needs to be billed to."
But I sure do remember EXACTLY what you're talking about from other jobs! Sometimes, you needed a little utility (a la WinRAR) for only ONE or TWO specific situations. Going to your boss to get permission to buy it and so forth might be "doable", but it could hurt your chances for approval of the next thing you wanted to buy. (Hey, your boss is only human. He's going to remember the fact that "John Q. Public has bugged me to buy new software 5 times in the last 2 months!" more than he's going to remember the details of what it all cost, or why it was needed.)
Well, IMHO, "poverty" is a rather relative term. The government has their definition of what it means, but I'd argue that it's flawed.
Here's the thing: Once you qualify as "poverty level" or "low income" by government's standards, you automatically qualify for quite a few assistance programs of theirs. Your kid's breakfasts and lunches at school? All free. Your utility bills? Subsidized. Health insurance? Free! Fill out the proper forms and go the proper routes, and you can even get govt. to cover things like your car repairs (EG. claim it's necessary to go to a job they found you in a "back to work" program of theirs.) I had friends living literally in the ghetto here, and yet they had high-speed DSL internet, subsidized to the point it was almost free for them.
I don't wish to get into the whole debate of whether any/all of this is "right" or "wrong"... but just saying it's a fact. I'd argue that if one earns around a $10-12/hr. wage in our city and has a dependent or two, he/she is no better off than the person earning a lot less - because they have to pay for examples like the above, while the person making less gets all those breaks.
I'm paying attention, but you're not really making sense.
Are you proposing that all political systems are "shit" unless they're designed to be foolproof?
I think by the very definition of "government", you're talking about building some sort of system of rules and regulations that's automatically subject to people agreeing to try to follow them.
Put it this way. Is chess a "crappy game" because it doesn't have provisions built into it to prevent someone from cheating by taking more than one turn while the other person isn't watching? Is the game of Blackjack "shit" because it wasn't designed to account for the possibility of somebody keeping an extra ace up their sleeve while playing?
Yes, you want a political system that's "resilient". A minority of corrupt individuals will hopefully not make the whole thing topple. And I think we HAD that in this country, until people started effectively changing the rules. When your own president treats the Constitution like "outdated papers that are largely meaningless", and the Judicial system is able to "interpret" laws to the point where their original purposes are completely twisted around - you have some big problems looming on the horizon.
It's not just Phoenix that's struggling. I have a friend in Portland, Oregon who is moving to where I live (St. Louis, MO) because she works in I.T. and can't find a job anywhere out there.
She said HP and Intel both have big layoffs either planned or in progress, and Nike is moving an entire facility out of Portland and overseas (S. Korea or something like that?). The only jobs you can find there right now are "day labor" types of things. Unemployment is something like 12% overall.
Here in St. Louis, I guess we look "good" by comparison, but we've recently had our "world headquarters" Anheuser Busch brewery bought out by the Belgians. Boeing seems to be continuously downsizing. Our Chrysler plant just closed up. Reuters' presence here has been dwindling. A.G. Edwards got bought out too. Meanwhile, I'm watching people going back to our area colleges and universities left and right, because they can't find a job and they decide they may as well just "take out a student loan, go back to school for a while, and hope it helps them get something better after they get back out".
We have a lot of help-desk type positions available here, thanks to businesses like Convergy's, who run 2 big call centers, and telcos who run others around town. But last I checked? Even $12/hr. was pretty optimistic for those positions. They're just "revolving door" jobs paying more like $8-10/hr. in many cases. Our cost of living might not be nearly as high as on the coasts - but I still can't imagine how anyone is able to live on their own at those wages here!
Here in St. Louis though, I often see this odd disconnect with reality. Typically, you'll have a married person who can't understand why a single person with a kid or kids wouldn't just "go work at place X" that has "openings right now paying $12 an hour". Obviously, they're too used to their 2 income lifestyle to realize that $12/hr. means scraping by in poverty level conditions if that's your sole source of income.
The problems we're experiencing today are NOT because of "free markets" at all.
The problems are because of govt. interference and manipulation of the markets for their own motives!
The USA has spent decades in a scenario people keep labeling a "free market", yet in reality, we REALLY have a situation that's just a bastardized version of the concept. A truly free marketplace requires a government that won't pass legislation simply because congressmen or senators have been "bought out" by big corporations.
Certain businesses have gotten ahead of the competition NOT through any normal means as defined by a "free market economy", but rather, by influencing government to give them a guaranteed legal advantage!
As we move more and more to a "global economy", it's also becoming clear that our government's standard tactics to control inflation and regulate economic growth are failing to work as well as they used to. There are probably just too many variables to the equations now. I believe Alan Greenspan made some comments to that effect right after he retired. He admitted that near the end, govt. was really just taking a lot of chances, hoping raising or lowering the interest rates or printing a little more or less money would have the desired effect. They felt they were slowly losing their ability to get a desired result from a specific action.
I absolutely agree with one of your statements, at least. "I don't think gaming directly causes the unhappiness. It's caused by the circumstances surrounding the gaming."
Gaming is, at the core, an escape mechanism. ALL of us feel the need to escape our daily lives now and then. That's why we enjoy things like watching movies. For a couple hours, we're focused on fictional characters and what's happening in THEIR lives, instead of our own. The problem is, when your life becomes something you dread returning to, you look for more and more lengthy "escapes". MMORPGs provide this type of escape, because they ACTIVELY (not passively like a movie) let you in to the make-believe world. You're a PARTICIPANT, and before long, you feel like it's really something "legitimate". (I've even seen people posting personals ads on Craigslist before where they detail their character and "clan" in their MMORPG of choice. Very telling that, given only a few paragraphs to try to define themselves, that they'd bring their gaming character into it!)
All of this amounts to little more than big corporations attempting to unite, in order to better fight off the most dominant players in the marketplace (Apple's iTunes store, primarily).
They knew from day 1 that Apple wouldn't go for it, since they rather like their "ecosystem" being undisturbed.
In the big picture though, ditching the DRM is the real answer. We already have standard audio and video formats out there! They're proven to work effectively on all sorts of hardware.
The content sales people always talk about "format incompatibility" because it sounds better, but this is REALLY about unifying protection schemes bolted on TOP of the formats.
Thankfully, I've never had to work for Best Buy myself. (I actually applied once, when I was out of work long enough and desperate - but they never called me back, and I found something far better not too long after that anyway.)
But IF I was working there, I think I'd be a little bothered by the fact that right alongside me was this Microsoft salesperson, hawking just ONE of our many products, and getting paid $20/hr. to do it!
How much is Best Buy paying the REST of the people doing sales over in the computer department, by comparison? I'm thinking about half that, right? And they have to actually ring up the sales, answer questions about ANYTHING the store stocks in that dept., try to push those awful "extended service plans" and who knows what else.
Plus, with Best Buy starting to partner more closely with Apple, selling iMacs and such - couldn't one of these people potentially be counter-productive to the Best Buy salesperson promoting a Mac to a new customer?
Yes, yes and YES! HP especially pisses me off with all these all-in-one devices with "network scanning capabilities" and so forth.
In reality, every time I ever set one up for people in a small office environment, the computers wind up with errors trying to find the "scanning device" eventually, and the software has to be uninstalled/reinstalled to get it corrected again.
A full install takes as long as 30-45 minutes to complete with all the junk they load in there. Sure, you can "custom install" and trim it down some - but you're still looking at well over 100MB of "required files", even if you ditch all the "HP Experience Enhancement" garbage and so forth.
Oh, and don't forget the nonsense they like to install that's supposed to make it quickly re-detect which USB port you've plugged their printer into, in case you unplug its cable and plug it back in a different USB port. (What's so wrong with just letting the OS handle those basics itself, huh??) Thanks to that garbage, I've had situations where memory sticks couldn't be accessed at all without disconnecting the HP Laser printer first, and other crazy stuff.
Exactly! But beyond even that, the idea that checking one's email repeatedly means they're "interrupted from doing constructive work" is flawed.
I know in my own situation, whether I'm reading/posting on Slashdot or repeatedly checking my email, it's because I have some free time to kill in the first place! When I'm given tasks to do, I'm going to focus on them first and the other stuff can all wait.
The fact is, though, when you work in systems administration or computer support roles, your time isn't really "in demand" the full 8 hours you're present in a day. Rather, you're paid to be *available* if and when anything goes wrong, and to do things to "continuously improve" the computer/network environment. As anyone can testify who has ever ordered new equipment or services for their business, that equates to plenty of "hurry up and wait".
Slashdot Mirror
Well, for whatever it's worth, I've installed a LOT of wireless routers for people over the years - and I learned to generally AVOID Belkin.
If you've got one that's working well for you, great. But on the whole, they were known for having sub-standard firmware in their devices. I remember, for example, when 802.11g was the "latest and greatest thing", Belkin had a "g" capable router that had a major bug in the firmware, preventing any "g" devices from connecting to it if it was configured to also allow backwards compatibility with "b" devices.
They did release a firmware update to correct that, but you still had a relatively weak/limited set of configuration options in the product.
I also recall finding Belkin wi-fi routers to have worse-than-average range.
People seemed to generally like Buffalo because they were priced a little bit lower than the competition, especially on things like wireless access points (which seem to generally be a big ripoff to this day, since they cost 2x to 3x more than a full-blown router, which can be programmed to function as an access point anyway!). That and they gave good performance for the money, and had better than average web-based interfaces.
Actually, I agree with you, that electric cars are where we should be headed.
My point was, more, that the "early adopters" of such technologies who are vastly over-paying for them, vs. real savings they'll achieve from the purchase, should stop throwing around false justifications. Anyone can play the "game" of cherry-picking indirect reasons why their choice makes them more "environmentally friendly".
IMHO, there's nothing wrong with purchasing a new technology like hybrids or an electric car, if you're doing so because you wish to invest your money into future R&D for that line of products, or simply because you like to get the chance to be among the first to use the new tech. There's no need for buyers to spread false or dubious claims that try to place them higher on some moral or environmentally-aware pedestal.
As for the step-down transformers, I wasn't aware they were quite THAT efficient. That is pretty good, but there's still SOME measure of loss there.
Laugh now, but when your iTunes music store has a "cattle herding tunes" section on it, where you can download rattlesnake sounds and cowboy whispers, it'll be a goldmine with the farming community!
This is exactly why it gets insane, quickly, trying to justify a particular type of energy usage as having "less overall environmental impact" than alternatives.
Yes, one can argue that refining gas and transporting it doubles the amount of energy it requires over simply what your car winds up using.
But one could also argue that electricity suffers the same fate, when you consider the losses due to resistance of transmission lines, step-down transformers, and losses incurred as energy is stored, short-term, in batteries before *finally* being used by a vehicle.
Then you *still* haven't factored in overall impact of such things as transmissions that wear out more quickly than electric powertrains, vs. batteries that wear out and have to be re-manufactured. (What chemicals go into that whole process, and how "clean" is it?)
Then you start wondering about the pollution levels of gasoline powered vehicles vs. electric cars, but have to balance that against pollution levels generated by the power plants generating the electricity. If they use nuclear power, how does THAT factor in, long-term, as far as ability to safely dispose of the radioactive waste? How much energy is used in transportation of the spent fuel rods and such?
Oh, and did we factor in groundwater pollution from leaking fuel tanks at gas stations, because that's probably an issue too? And how much gas is used driving to gas stations, JUST to fuel up a car, vs. electric cars that could recharge at home and save those trips?
See what I mean? Ultimately, I think the *only* sensible metric is figuring out which option costs you, the consumer, the least to go with.
Bickering about whether or not I meant "Democracy" to mean a literal Democracy is really beside the point here. (People constantly refer to America as a "Democracy", understanding that most of us know we don't *really* all have direct input into each and every issue that's voted on. If I more accurately said "Democratic Republic" in my original message, nothing else would have changed.....
The point is, our representatives didn't even TRY to look out for the best interests of the people! If they had, they would have demanded some research into the reasoning that $700 billion was the "right" dollar amount to solve our problems. If they had, they wouldn't have changed their votes from "no" to "yes" over such trivial additional to the bill as giving Hollywood movie producers tax credits on their production expenses, or giving makers of a special type of toy arrow a tax credit!
Obviously, I already "know what to do" when it comes to voting out the representatives who didn't do their jobs properly. That's a given, and thankfully - there are many web sites already giving people complete lists of who voted for and against this bailout.
I realize that 300 million of us can't realistically be expected to deal with the gritty details of proposed legislation on a day to day basis. That's not what I'm upset about!
The problem in THIS case is, we're talking about legislation spending $700 BILLION taxpayer dollars (eventually wound up over $100 billion HIGHER than that!), and yet the Senate simply rubber-stamped it on through without so much as a BIT of concern that maybe this wasn't well researched or thought out before being proposed! THEN, they went on to do something that's really not their job at ALL .... They made a concerted effort to do anything they could do to sell the bill to the House, including tweaking and adjusting it left and right to cater to whichever special interest would tempt a particular individual to switch a "no" vote to a "yes"!
How can you sit there and claim you believe "this bill was a good idea" when among other things, it gives millions of dollars to toy makers making a specific type of arrow for a kid's bow, gives perks to businesses so they can buy employees bicycles or pay for their maintenance if they ride them to work, and gives special tax breaks to makers of wool clothing items?? NONE of this addresses the core problem at all! None of this helps fix the supposed "financial meltdown and collapse" that we were supposed to see if this wasn't passed!
Over on Forbes.com, they interviewed a financial analyst and asked him how they came up with the $700 billion figure as the proper amount to rescue the economy. He admitted that it wasn't because of any study or mathematical formula they used. Rather, they just picked $700 billion because it was a nice, big number!
Anyone thinking all of THIS was "good politics" is a damn fool!
What I find MOST incredible about this whole bailout, is the fact that nationwide polls of the general populace indicated between 70% and 75% were AGAINST the legislation, yet the Senate passed it through with FLYING COLORS, and House of "Representatives" were swayed to voting for it in a matter of only a few days. All it really took was throwing in a few key financial incentives and bonuses to the appropriate special interests, and some empty promises by potential presidents to be.
The whole time, these "Representatives" were being flooded with demands from the American people NOT to vote for the bailout - but they turned a deaf ear to everyone, and made bold claims like "I may not be re-elected because of this, but I'm confident I did the right thing for America's future anyway." One moron said he changed his vote from NO to YES, simply because "I talked with potential president to be, Obama, and he personally assured me he would enact legislation after his election that's in alignment with what I want to see." (WHAT?!? You were VERBALLY promised some B.S. by a guy who MAY or MAY NOT become president, so that's more important to you than listening to the people who elected you and trusted you to represent their wishes?!)
When HUGE taxpayer expenditures like this are voted through and signed into law in less than a week, despite 3 out of 4 Americans being strongly against them - it's clear we no longer live in a Democracy at all! This seems like as good a reason for an overthrow of our government as what we dealt with back around 1776! Yet people will not only sit back and accept it, but probably not even vote in protest for a 3rd. party like the Libertarians. (Incidentally, Bob Barr has been speaking out against this bailout the whole time, unlike our Democratic or Republican contenders. The man gets MY vote for that reason alone. At least he's in support of the will of the PEOPLE still!)
Actually, I can relate to that guy and his feelings ... even if perhaps, it wasn't worded as well as it could be.
I'm divorced and have my kid full-time, so there's no other parent for her to go to, and there aren't even any kids in the neighborhood she can really count on playing with. (Most of them are only around every other weekend or so, since they're part of divorced families too.) Since she's an only child, I'm pretty much her only source of entertainment, when she's not playing by herself.
It gets old QUICKLY.... and to retain my sanity, I have to try to encourage her to keep herself occupied with her own activities as much as possible. Sure, we do lots of stuff together. I even taught her how to play chess. (She's only 6 so she's not exactly good at it, but she knows all the basic rules of how the pieces move, which is a start!) But there are times when I'm on the computer and she wants to do the same thing, so she gets on the other one. Currently, her only web sites of interest are ones with Flash based games, like Playhouse Disney or Nick Jr. I wish somebody would offer another alternative to those, though. I don't like how in order to get any educational value from a site, it seems like you have to accept the commercial characters and branding they bundle with it.
Honestly, I ignored Facebook for a long time (just like I have MySpace), because I figured as a guy in my late 30's, it wouldn't have that much to offer me. I'm not all that thrilled by the idea of seeing how many "friends" I can collect up on my account for "bragging rights", and some of the HTML disasters people create as pages are eye-sores.
But I finally gave in, after person after person told me to "check out their Facebook page" for this or that reason, and created my own account.
It was amazing how many people started contacting me who I haven't seen since as long ago as grade school! It really did put me back in touch with 5 or 6 good friends I'd totally lost track of.
So "fad" or not, I can vouch for Facebook serving a useful purpose, at least as long as it's "in vogue" for people to sign on and use it.
At least things have gotten a little better in recent years. I recall working as a tech. for a couple of different "mom and pop" type computer stores in the early to mid 1990's, when everybody was building "house brand" generic clones for their customers.
The typical mini-tower case with power supply was purchased for about $40 total, and always came straight from China, with the cheapest sheet metal possible. (Amazingly, many of these shipped with respectably decent power supplies, too, depending on who you bought from. But then, it's also worth remembering that you needed less wattage for most systems built at that time.) It was almost impossible to assemble one of those without slicing up at least one finger or thumb, since none of the metal edges inside the case were sanded down or rounded off. (That would make it cost more!)
Huh? This has practically nothing to do with the original article!
Apple had at least 3 or 4 revisions of the power supply used in the PowerMac G5 towers, due to problems with them creating electrical hums or buzzes, which were making them unsuitable for recording studio type applications. The Mac Pro, although a revamped system, probably had a few power supply issues as well.
They use a pretty big power supply (around 1000 watts), and it's inevitable that at least a few of them had manufacturing defects that could cause them to burn up and "almost start a fire". It's certainly not a common issue with them, though. If *any* large power supply burns up, you'll get some nasty smells coming from it, from things like popped electrolytic capacitors and melted plastic on wires in them.
I have to admit that I'm not much of a gambler (or even a card player), but I took a look at one of the online casinos recently, after they sent me a REALLY slick marketing packet in the mail.
It was a full color glossy "magazine" with real articles and everything, but essentially an advertisement to visit an online casino, with a free $50 credit to get started.
I figured, "$50 to get started? I'll give it a shot, and if nothing else, I'll just cash out and collect my $50 or whatever is left of it after I lose a round or two!"
Well, after installing their software on the included CD and going through their lengthy registration process, I picked a blackjack game and gave it a try.
That's when I realized there was a LOT of fine print, beyond what the advertisement promised. Yes, you could place bets with your complimentary $50 credit, but money you won over and above that was not possible to convert into a real payout. You could only use it for further gambling. You had to deposit actual funds before you could withdraw any winnings!
At that point, I just played until I lost my "$50" and logged off, never to use the garbage again.
You're just not good enough at case-modding then!
People have already managed to put them in beverage containers:
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/bubbacomp/
http://metku.net/index.html?sect=view&n=1&path=mods/whiskypc/index_eng
I've experienced the exact opposite before, just like the other person who posted a reply to you.
I think it has more to do with the type of neighborhood a particular store is located in.
WalMart stores around here tend to mostly be in neighborhoods bordering on higher-crime areas. People are constantly trying to return things to them that weren't bought there to begin with, or maybe were shoplifted from them earlier in the day.
When you have a legitimate return, you're made to feel like a criminal yourself, until you prove otherwise. I had one pair of jeans to return one time, and the clerk spent several minutes looking over every inch of them to make sure nothing was torn, stained or slightly damaged in any way. After all THAT, she still called over someone from that dept. to make sure it was a pair they currently stocked, and to verify the price on my receipt was still correct (no sales running currently or anything that might mean I'd get back more than what they were selling them for that day). Pain in the butt....
Yep... but I believe I paid close to $200 for that same card back when it was the "latest and greatest" thing. (The big deal about it for me at the time was, it was still offered in an AGP version, and things were just starting to go to PCIe. I didn't want to buy a whole new motherboard just to upgrade my video card, so it seemed like a good alternative.)
Wow! If I only had a spare mod point for ya....
This is SO true! At least where I work now, they generally have a policy that "If the purchase is under $1000, and you're among the privileged few holding a corporate credit card, you can go ahead and order it on your own. Just turn in the paperwork with notations about what/who it's for, and the cost center it needs to be billed to."
But I sure do remember EXACTLY what you're talking about from other jobs! Sometimes, you needed a little utility (a la WinRAR) for only ONE or TWO specific situations. Going to your boss to get permission to buy it and so forth might be "doable", but it could hurt your chances for approval of the next thing you wanted to buy. (Hey, your boss is only human. He's going to remember the fact that "John Q. Public has bugged me to buy new software 5 times in the last 2 months!" more than he's going to remember the details of what it all cost, or why it was needed.)
Well, IMHO, "poverty" is a rather relative term. The government has their definition of what it means, but I'd argue that it's flawed.
Here's the thing: Once you qualify as "poverty level" or "low income" by government's standards, you automatically qualify for quite a few assistance programs of theirs. Your kid's breakfasts and lunches at school? All free. Your utility bills? Subsidized. Health insurance? Free! Fill out the proper forms and go the proper routes, and you can even get govt. to cover things like your car repairs (EG. claim it's necessary to go to a job they found you in a "back to work" program of theirs.) I had friends living literally in the ghetto here, and yet they had high-speed DSL internet, subsidized to the point it was almost free for them.
I don't wish to get into the whole debate of whether any/all of this is "right" or "wrong" ... but just saying it's a fact. I'd argue that if one earns around a $10-12/hr. wage in our city and has a dependent or two, he/she is no better off than the person earning a lot less - because they have to pay for examples like the above, while the person making less gets all those breaks.
I'm paying attention, but you're not really making sense.
Are you proposing that all political systems are "shit" unless they're designed to be foolproof?
I think by the very definition of "government", you're talking about building some sort of system of rules and regulations that's automatically subject to people agreeing to try to follow them.
Put it this way. Is chess a "crappy game" because it doesn't have provisions built into it to prevent someone from cheating by taking more than one turn while the other person isn't watching? Is the game of Blackjack "shit" because it wasn't designed to account for the possibility of somebody keeping an extra ace up their sleeve while playing?
Yes, you want a political system that's "resilient". A minority of corrupt individuals will hopefully not make the whole thing topple. And I think we HAD that in this country, until people started effectively changing the rules. When your own president treats the Constitution like "outdated papers that are largely meaningless", and the Judicial system is able to "interpret" laws to the point where their original purposes are completely twisted around - you have some big problems looming on the horizon.
It's not just Phoenix that's struggling. I have a friend in Portland, Oregon who is moving to where I live (St. Louis, MO) because she works in I.T. and can't find a job anywhere out there.
She said HP and Intel both have big layoffs either planned or in progress, and Nike is moving an entire facility out of Portland and overseas (S. Korea or something like that?). The only jobs you can find there right now are "day labor" types of things. Unemployment is something like 12% overall.
Here in St. Louis, I guess we look "good" by comparison, but we've recently had our "world headquarters" Anheuser Busch brewery bought out by the Belgians. Boeing seems to be continuously downsizing. Our Chrysler plant just closed up. Reuters' presence here has been dwindling. A.G. Edwards got bought out too. Meanwhile, I'm watching people going back to our area colleges and universities left and right, because they can't find a job and they decide they may as well just "take out a student loan, go back to school for a while, and hope it helps them get something better after they get back out".
We have a lot of help-desk type positions available here, thanks to businesses like Convergy's, who run 2 big call centers, and telcos who run others around town. But last I checked? Even $12/hr. was pretty optimistic for those positions. They're just "revolving door" jobs paying more like $8-10/hr. in many cases. Our cost of living might not be nearly as high as on the coasts - but I still can't imagine how anyone is able to live on their own at those wages here!
Here in St. Louis though, I often see this odd disconnect with reality. Typically, you'll have a married person who can't understand why a single person with a kid or kids wouldn't just "go work at place X" that has "openings right now paying $12 an hour". Obviously, they're too used to their 2 income lifestyle to realize that $12/hr. means scraping by in poverty level conditions if that's your sole source of income.
The problems we're experiencing today are NOT because of "free markets" at all.
The problems are because of govt. interference and manipulation of the markets for their own motives!
The USA has spent decades in a scenario people keep labeling a "free market", yet in reality, we REALLY have a situation that's just a bastardized version of the concept. A truly free marketplace requires a government that won't pass legislation simply because congressmen or senators have been "bought out" by big corporations.
Certain businesses have gotten ahead of the competition NOT through any normal means as defined by a "free market economy", but rather, by influencing government to give them a guaranteed legal advantage!
As we move more and more to a "global economy", it's also becoming clear that our government's standard tactics to control inflation and regulate economic growth are failing to work as well as they used to. There are probably just too many variables to the equations now. I believe Alan Greenspan made some comments to that effect right after he retired. He admitted that near the end, govt. was really just taking a lot of chances, hoping raising or lowering the interest rates or printing a little more or less money would have the desired effect. They felt they were slowly losing their ability to get a desired result from a specific action.
I absolutely agree with one of your statements, at least. "I don't think gaming directly causes the unhappiness. It's caused by the circumstances surrounding the gaming."
Gaming is, at the core, an escape mechanism. ALL of us feel the need to escape our daily lives now and then. That's why we enjoy things like watching movies. For a couple hours, we're focused on fictional characters and what's happening in THEIR lives, instead of our own. The problem is, when your life becomes something you dread returning to, you look for more and more lengthy "escapes". MMORPGs provide this type of escape, because they ACTIVELY (not passively like a movie) let you in to the make-believe world. You're a PARTICIPANT, and before long, you feel like it's really something "legitimate". (I've even seen people posting personals ads on Craigslist before where they detail their character and "clan" in their MMORPG of choice. Very telling that, given only a few paragraphs to try to define themselves, that they'd bring their gaming character into it!)
All of this amounts to little more than big corporations attempting to unite, in order to better fight off the most dominant players in the marketplace (Apple's iTunes store, primarily).
They knew from day 1 that Apple wouldn't go for it, since they rather like their "ecosystem" being undisturbed.
In the big picture though, ditching the DRM is the real answer. We already have standard audio and video formats out there! They're proven to work effectively on all sorts of hardware.
The content sales people always talk about "format incompatibility" because it sounds better, but this is REALLY about unifying protection schemes bolted on TOP of the formats.
Thankfully, I've never had to work for Best Buy myself. (I actually applied once, when I was out of work long enough and desperate - but they never called me back, and I found something far better not too long after that anyway.)
But IF I was working there, I think I'd be a little bothered by the fact that right alongside me was this Microsoft salesperson, hawking just ONE of our many products, and getting paid $20/hr. to do it!
How much is Best Buy paying the REST of the people doing sales over in the computer department, by comparison? I'm thinking about half that, right? And they have to actually ring up the sales, answer questions about ANYTHING the store stocks in that dept., try to push those awful "extended service plans" and who knows what else.
Plus, with Best Buy starting to partner more closely with Apple, selling iMacs and such - couldn't one of these people potentially be counter-productive to the Best Buy salesperson promoting a Mac to a new customer?
Yes, yes and YES! HP especially pisses me off with all these all-in-one devices with "network scanning capabilities" and so forth.
In reality, every time I ever set one up for people in a small office environment, the computers wind up with errors trying to find the "scanning device" eventually, and the software has to be uninstalled/reinstalled to get it corrected again.
A full install takes as long as 30-45 minutes to complete with all the junk they load in there. Sure, you can "custom install" and trim it down some - but you're still looking at well over 100MB of "required files", even if you ditch all the "HP Experience Enhancement" garbage and so forth.
Oh, and don't forget the nonsense they like to install that's supposed to make it quickly re-detect which USB port you've plugged their printer into, in case you unplug its cable and plug it back in a different USB port. (What's so wrong with just letting the OS handle those basics itself, huh??) Thanks to that garbage, I've had situations where memory sticks couldn't be accessed at all without disconnecting the HP Laser printer first, and other crazy stuff.
Exactly! But beyond even that, the idea that checking one's email repeatedly means they're "interrupted from doing constructive work" is flawed.
I know in my own situation, whether I'm reading/posting on Slashdot or repeatedly checking my email, it's because I have some free time to kill in the first place! When I'm given tasks to do, I'm going to focus on them first and the other stuff can all wait.
The fact is, though, when you work in systems administration or computer support roles, your time isn't really "in demand" the full 8 hours you're present in a day. Rather, you're paid to be *available* if and when anything goes wrong, and to do things to "continuously improve" the computer/network environment. As anyone can testify who has ever ordered new equipment or services for their business, that equates to plenty of "hurry up and wait".