How often do you think they come home with bullet holes?
Perhaps as high as 3% of the time? Does that really qualify as all the time?
Not sure what the hyperbole was for, or how this can get +5 insightful for implying that at least half (if not most) if blimps that go up are fired upon.
I agree the employment numbers are cooked. But your figure is worse. Your figure assumes everyone wants to work. In other words, it includes stay at home mothers as a "deficit" in working people, when they are not.
Heck, it probably also includes the independently wealthy who definitely don't wish to work, don't need to, and are supported by their own income.
Due to how the LBA48 standard was implemented, a controller chip isn't "LBA48" or not. You just write some registers twice. You can make any controller chip do LBA48 with the right software.
Bridge chips are problematic since they are self-contained and you can't necessarily update the software on them (and they might be out of code space), but laptops don't use bridge chips, they just have an ATA interface that is accessed by the main CPU. Fix the code on the main CPU (OS or BIOS) and you're there.
No phone will survive falling 5 stories to concrete, especially without a scratch. It's just plain physics.
Now, if I threw it and it hit a few branches, or landed on some soft ground, lots of devices could survive.
Paint shakers aren't very stressful. Unless it already had something loose inside, it isn't going to break it. Putting it in a vise (correct spelling) isn't that useful, it spreads all that force out, it'll take a shockingly large amount of force to break it if you do that, since you're spreading it out.
What you really want to do is use it as a bridge, that is, build two minature piers with a gap between. Lay it over that gap, then press down with force in the middle. See how much force it takes to break it. This is a pretty standard test, and it is relevant to being in tight pants when you sit down.
Then compare the force to how much it's likely to get. This is probably a lot less than you think, since skin gives, it can move in your pocket to minimize force, and if it is pressed on something solid, like bone, you'll feel pain at relatively low levels.
I personally think that throwing the thing up in the air 40 feet and having it fall on concrete isn't playing to its strengths. That'll destroy nearly anything that isn't massively deformable, as it did here.
Search for it. It's used for this exactly. It's great on CDs/DVDs too.
Your phone doesn't scratch on the display because if you look closely, the display is covered by an hard plastic insert. The rest of the case is a softer (actually more durable) plastic. Apple doesn't seem to want to insert harder plastic over the screen because it would require a bumpy frame around the display. The Mini had the harder plastic, because it was made of metal elsewhere.
Also note that since Apple doesn't use an insert over the display, their displays show rainbows when viewed through polarized glasses due to the stresses resulting from injection molding. Again, the Mini didn't have these.
Nobody makes large plastic things like phones scratch proof all over because "scratch proof" plastic is more brittle and much more expensive to shape. If your phone or iPod body was made of it, the keys would chip the corners off it in no time.
Well, they don't make affordable things "scratch proof". It's usually only used in small areas like the inserts over displays on your phone. This means you don't use much of it, and making flat sheets is cheap and easy.
Well, floating is accomplished by weighing less than the water a device displaces. Since the contents of the device are pretty much fixed (flash, CPU, display, etc.), the weight of the contents is fixed too. So in order to make it float (if it doesn't already) that means you have to make it bigger.
Apple isn't much of a "make it bigger" kind of company.
It'd be easy to make a case for the nano that contains enough empty space (well, air) to make it low density enough to float. And you could use that space for one of those connector systems that lets the main box remain sealed while still allowing headphones to be connected. This would be the best of both worlds, the device would be small when the case isn't on, and when you go near water, you put the case on and it's now waterproof and floats, but perhaps a little bigger.
Most GPS units are not waterproof and do not float.
You're going to cheap out on the CF readers, when the CF cards themselves will cost you a good $500+?
You're talking about $2000 minimum just to get off the ground here. How does the poor man afford this?
I can't imagine how the write performance would do anything but stink. In theory enough flash in parallel should have decent write performance, but I doubt this setup will manage to extract it.
It will likely let you use your laptop as a headset/speaker for your phone, but not use your phone as a headset/speaker for your laptop.
I say this because although virtually all Bluetooth phones will USE a Bluetooth headset, virtually none of them (none I've seen) will BE a Bluetooth headset. There's just not way to get most phones to pretend to be on a call (turn on the speaker and mic) and send the data elsewhere to be transported.
As to using your computer as a handsfree system for yor phone, that's been possible for some time already. The question is, why would you do it?
LBA48 won't be a big deal for laptops, because this problem has already been solved for 3.5" drives and desktops, and that hardware (Firewire bridge chips) and software is already there. It's not like Windows has one driver for 3.5" ATA devices and another for 2.5" ATA devices. The only part that is specific to laptops that I can think of it the BIOS. I guess it's possible that the BIOSes in even recent laptops haven't been updated to boot from LBA48 devices simply because they didn't have to. But I expect most of them (at least in the last year) will be okay.
Your question is pretty strange. As if people didn't search before google?
I know Google when they came on the scene were far better than everyone else, they really did a much better job.
But that doesn't mean that worthwhile search tools didn't exist before Google.
I really should have put something after my knock-off comment in my post. Google has done some great sites. Few original ones, but a couple great ones. But still, that doesn't mean MS can't come in even later and out-do Google. And before you spout about how that's impossible, think of Orkut. It sucks. Think of MSN Earth, which has much higher res sat pics than Google maps.
Okay, so anyway, MS is going to try to compete with Google. I'm glad of that. I can pick and choose whichever ones I want, so competition is a good thing.
Finally, Google came onto the scene with a great search tool. Remember when every time you would search on Google, the best result was #1? How long has it been since that was the rule? It's not their fault, it's because so many people are trying to skew Google's results for profit, and it's working. But by the same token, it means that any competitor who comes into the marketplace with a new scheme stands some chance of beating Google on results quality simply because they aren't the ones the bozos are optimizing to beat.
Really, if you want to transfer things to and from your phone for free, it'd be best to show phone companies that it matters to you by buying a phone which doesn't have these restrictions.
I have no problems moving files up and down to my phone with Bluetooth, because I bought a phone which could do so.
Note that following these rules will lock you out of almost all Verizon phones. I solved this problem by leaving Verizon.
Buckling spring is the best keyboards ever. And actually, the best feel ever AFACT is on the original 84-key PC keyboard and 85-key PC/AT keyboards with 10 F-keys on the left. The 84-key had a bad layout (backslash key in an insane location), and many people like a separate numeric keypad. So a 101-key (PS/2) model M is a great compromise. Perhaps overall, the best keyboard ever made.
IBM made them for the RS/6000s for some time, I have one of the last ones. It is a prized possession.
If there is keyboard equivalent to a type 57 Bugatti, the 84-key buckling key (Model M) PC keyboard would probably be it.
Transfer rate and latency aren't the same thing. You can definitely have huge transfer rates without high rotation rate. But you absolutely cannot reduce latency without increasing rotation rate, at least not without adding more head arms.
So there is a valid reason to go fast. I wouldn't be surprised if HD PVRs needed 7200RPM in order to keep their buffers from overflowing (given reasonable amounts of RAM), but I don't know it is actually true.
It did very, very well on all those regular THD, SNR, etc. tests. "better many CD players". Given the limitations of the size and availability of power (battery can't come close to a wall socket in ability to deliver oomph), it is a near miracle.
Of course, much of that miracle came from Wolfson (the DAC used in the iPod), and so all the iPod competitors can do the same if they just get the analog parts on the output amps right.
But anyone who says the iPod is objectively bad on audio quality is off their rocker. It may be bested in some areas, but the differences between the iPod and its competitors (especially in the negative direction) are miniscule compared to the overall excellence of any of these devices.
I mean, seriously, bitching about 96dB S/N instead of 100dB? The average background sound level in a room is 40dB or more, so you can't get even 96dB S/N to your ears unless the peaks of the music are hitting 136dB. Is your system doing that? And besides that, these S/N tests show the iPod clears 100dB by a little bit anyway.
As to your bass compaints (which are spot on), perhaps under all this pressure, Apple has seen the light with the Nano, we'll have to see some measurements. Note that into a high impedance (line level) input, even the mini has no bass problems, even from the headphone out. Because the output caps create a rolloff filter with the impedance of the load. On 16 or 32 ohm headphones, the rolloff might be distressingly high (40Hz?), but when you kick the load impedance up to 1K ohms, as a line level input is, the rolloff retreats down to below 10Hz.
Well, mostly. Apparently, they think the water has more inertia than the air, so when the storm dropped to cat 4, it maintained most of it's cat 5 force in terms of surge. True? I dunno. But that's what I heard.
Also, the spinning direction of the storm means the winds (and thus waves) were blowing right into Lake Ponch, piling up even more water there than you would otherwise expect.
A CF card would only fit in there in one direction, and there would be no room for the mobo below or above it, the top case above it, and only barely for the metal back below it. And you'd have no room left for the battery.
It is only just over twice the size of a CF card.
Are you sure you have a real grasp of how small this thing is?
I say I don't love NO, and you transform that into that I don't care about it. That's an interesting way of taking it. You started this "my city is awesome" contest by saying everyone loves NO, not me. So I don't love NO. Sue me.
What kind of relativism is this anyway? If Gary, Indiana floods out, that's okay, because no one loves it. But if NO floods, we'd better get right on it? Apparently I can't call myself a "patriot" because I don't hold NO above other cities.
The rail system idea is interesting, but I don't think it's worthwhile. Repairing a busted levee (or retaining wall, as the case may be) while the water is flowing over it (and over the tracks) isn't easy. In this case, it probably would have been near impossible. It'd really be better just to fix the system so the walls won't break.
Eh, who am I kidding? Due to the pumping the ground is subsiding, this problem gets worse all the time. Really, the fix is to raise the ground level so that the pumps can be turned off. Then the ground will stop subsiding and there will be have fewer problems next time this happens. Where to get all that dirt, I dunno. Moving it wouldn't be easy either, but it'd be easier than digging a hole and then building a city over it!
I still think your hole idea is crazy. And no, you can't fit a significant portion of Lake Ponch in there either. The lake is 10x the size of the entire land area of NO. And the Bayou area of NO is what, 1/8th of it? So, if you dug down 8 meters, you could hold 10% of the volume of lake Ponch. That'd be les than 1/3rd of the surge alone, forgetting the water already there. All it would do is give maybe a couple hours before the water started rising. But since it'd been 5 days now since the water started rising and people are still there, do you think a few more hours would have helped?
Really, it'd be most important just to get everyone out. People just didn't leave because they've been through this before, and they don't feel like leaving their pets behind, spending money and time to get far away just to come back. Well, they were wrong about that this time, and it cost them. But building holes won't fix that.
You are blaming the Corps here. They were tasked with building protection to a Cat 3 hurricane. They did. That's the end of it. Expecting protection for a cat 3 to work on a cat 4/5 is ridiculous. It's like buying a 4-cylinder car and then complaining it isn't the V6 version. You asked for the 4-cylinder version, you paid for the 4-cylinder version. If you needed a 6-cylinder, why did you buy the 4-cylinder? And it isn't as if the Corps was hiding that the protection wasn't enough, everyone knew. A band even wrote a pop song about it! Someone didn't find the problem a big enough concern, or more likely couldn't find the money to pay for it.
The Corps and everyone else knew the walls were only good for a cat 3. No one bellied up the money for more protection. So you get what you asked and paid for.
And I don't like Rumsfeld either, but this has been a problem since before 2001, if Katrina had blown through in August 2000, the problem would have been just as bad, and you'd have no way to blame Rumsfeld.
I just don't get that. It does have the tempting thing of keeping the pumps above water longer. But if that's a problem, just build levees around the pumps and put pumps above the pumps to keep the pumps dry.
As to your reservoir, you are not going to make a dent in the amount of water in the Mississippi, let alone the ocean, by digging a hole for it to flow into. There was plenty more water available to fill the city, and it would have still done so.
Will it buy time? Perhaps. But people didn't leave. They're still there! Buying time isn't going to help. If the levees break and people don't leave, they're boned.
Blaming the Corps is ridiculous. The #1 problem was the huge hurricane, the #2 problem was everyone knew this would happen, including the Corps, and no one took it seriously enough. It didn't take a lot of research to find that those walls were built for a cat 3, not a cat 4 with a cat 5 surge.
The city wasn't safe for the hit it took. That's it. It's not the Corps fault, with the proper money and time they probably could have made it safe for a cat 4 or perhaps a low cat 5. But they weren't given the money, nor tasked to do it.
Where do you get this "city everyone loves so much" and "so important to our economy" stuff. Are the refineries in the city limits all of a sudden? The actual hurricane damage (as opposed to later flood damage) in the other areas was what really hurt the economy. Not damage to a city with 33% of its citizens below the poverty level. Although it would suck if the Mississippi were no longer navigable.
No way. Let's play the satellite map game. There's no way the average city is 60% road. I know there's a lot of roads, it's really distressingly high actually, but not 60%. Even if you count driveways and parking lots (essentially then counting all paved surfaces) I can't imagine it makes 60%.
As to your other stuff, you do make a lot of good points. However, we make all our electricy from petroleum. Nuclear power is dead, and green sources just don't make enough to make a dent (but it's rising at least).
As to it costing 3x as much, I could easily say it costs 5x as much. I do own a 5 person car. And although the government is hiding some of the costs of running a car, it also does so for trains too. And the train I would possibly take, it runs on Diesel fuel. Although they are trying to electrify it right now, mostly for speed, partially for efficiency.
That's simply not possible. Even if the trolleycars were run on solar power (which didn't really exist back then), just maintaining them creates pollution.
I would also question why the link thinks that these companies would have been profitable when bus and light rail systems are not. It's a more competitive market now, if these systems still existed, they would certainly require subsidies to compete with cars. I mean, I and 3 friends are going up to San Francisco next week. If we were all to take Caltrain (which is subsidized) it would cost about $36 for us to go. We can take a car for under $10, even adding in the actual purchase cost of the car, I would imagine its under $20. And my car isn't the cheapest or more efficient.
So, GM's practices or no, there's no guarantee these systems would be profitable today.
It's kind of cool though, I recognize that bridge in the picture. I'm gonna go over and check it out, see if I can see the old wire supports like it says.
Votes for Supreme Court justices are the most politicized votes of all in Congress (except perhaps impeachment). The whole thing is a sham, it'll go right down party lines, no matter who Bush picks. Oh, they'll talk like they're evaluating the candidate, but it's a sham.
And heck, he's a lame duck, it's difficult to hurt him in any way.
Tell the difference between the DoI and the Constitution I mean (wonder how I got modded up!). I guess I blew that in bolstering my point, but it still stands somewhat. The Constitution was considered so vague by the colonies that they didn't ratify it until there were ammendments spelling at least a few important things out explicitly.
But it still says a few things (besides a slave is worth 60% of a white man), things that do matter. And are people just going to bitch every time a judge finds that its content actually means something?
Perhaps some people will. Well, they'd do well to get the people together and fix it. The Constitution has been ammended before, it can be done again.
I think it's personally quite obvious that the Constutition trump card was not supposed to be played in limited enumerated circumstances. It should be played whenever it applies, and not when it does. But that's the rub. One person thinks it doesn't apply, and blames judges. Pardon me, "unelected" judges. You know, the ones who are unelected because it says that in the Constitution (at least at the Federal level). When these people complain about judges being unelected, they are trying to undermine the Constitution itself. (And for that matter, you don't see Bush refusing to appoint Supreme Court Judges based upon these "unelected" complaints.)
Really, it all doesn't surprise me at all. When Bush stood in front of the press and said he felt there was a higher law of the land than the Constitution, and reached down and brought up a Bible, that pretty much said it all right there.
Bush, for some reason thinks his religion is good enough for everyone and so we should all follow it. If his religion has a problem with stem cell research, then he puts a major crimp in stem cell research. If his religion is against abortion, then we change the courts ASAP so that they can overturn that too. And then of course we should be able to pray to his God in our schools too.
It drives me nuts. Escaping others telling you how to live your life on religious grounds was a big reason this country was formed, and why we have a separation of church and state. To see it all undone distresses me greatly.
I would love to see a return to a leader who, although religious, doesn't feel like he should invoke his religion as a governing principle above the Constitution, nor thinks that we should rejigger our laws to match his religious beliefs (like they do in Fundamentalist countries). You know, someone like George H. W. Bush (president #41). How this apple fell from that tree I just can't understand.
Anyhow, "strict constructionism" just doesn't work. The law isn't explicit enough. The law has to be interpreted. Or else perhaps the 2nd ammendment doesn't apply to anything but matchlock muskets, since that's all that existed when it was written. And you do realize that nowhere in the constitution does it say women are equal to men, only that black men (slaves) are equal to other men. Are we to supposed that women aren't equal because it isn't explicit in there?
Let's not get stuck in the past here, as an excuse to change a few unhappy decisions in the present. Let's not lock ourselves into 18th Century principles.
All this religious nuttery and "it must be as it is written" crap is really starting to freak me out. I mean, why did we go into Iraq? To stop Muslim Fundamentalists who want to make their religion the law of the land based upon strict, outdated interpretations of a 200 year old text? Substitute Christian for Muslim and I swear we're heading to the same awful place.
So sad. I won't sleep well tonight. I mean even worse than usual.
Whatever happened to real conservatism? The Republicans left it behind in favor of telling everyone what to do. All we have left is Pat Buchanan, who isn't doing us any favors either.
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How often do you think they come home with bullet holes?
Perhaps as high as 3% of the time? Does that really qualify as all the time?
Not sure what the hyperbole was for, or how this can get +5 insightful for implying that at least half (if not most) if blimps that go up are fired upon.
I agree the employment numbers are cooked. But your figure is worse. Your figure assumes everyone wants to work. In other words, it includes stay at home mothers as a "deficit" in working people, when they are not.
Heck, it probably also includes the independently wealthy who definitely don't wish to work, don't need to, and are supported by their own income.
Due to how the LBA48 standard was implemented, a controller chip isn't "LBA48" or not. You just write some registers twice. You can make any controller chip do LBA48 with the right software.
Bridge chips are problematic since they are self-contained and you can't necessarily update the software on them (and they might be out of code space), but laptops don't use bridge chips, they just have an ATA interface that is accessed by the main CPU. Fix the code on the main CPU (OS or BIOS) and you're there.
No phone will survive falling 5 stories to concrete, especially without a scratch. It's just plain physics.
Now, if I threw it and it hit a few branches, or landed on some soft ground, lots of devices could survive.
Paint shakers aren't very stressful. Unless it already had something loose inside, it isn't going to break it. Putting it in a vise (correct spelling) isn't that useful, it spreads all that force out, it'll take a shockingly large amount of force to break it if you do that, since you're spreading it out.
What you really want to do is use it as a bridge, that is, build two minature piers with a gap between. Lay it over that gap, then press down with force in the middle. See how much force it takes to break it. This is a pretty standard test, and it is relevant to being in tight pants when you sit down.
Then compare the force to how much it's likely to get. This is probably a lot less than you think, since skin gives, it can move in your pocket to minimize force, and if it is pressed on something solid, like bone, you'll feel pain at relatively low levels.
I personally think that throwing the thing up in the air 40 feet and having it fall on concrete isn't playing to its strengths. That'll destroy nearly anything that isn't massively deformable, as it did here.
Search for it. It's used for this exactly. It's great on CDs/DVDs too.
Your phone doesn't scratch on the display because if you look closely, the display is covered by an hard plastic insert. The rest of the case is a softer (actually more durable) plastic. Apple doesn't seem to want to insert harder plastic over the screen because it would require a bumpy frame around the display. The Mini had the harder plastic, because it was made of metal elsewhere.
Also note that since Apple doesn't use an insert over the display, their displays show rainbows when viewed through polarized glasses due to the stresses resulting from injection molding. Again, the Mini didn't have these.
Nobody makes large plastic things like phones scratch proof all over because "scratch proof" plastic is more brittle and much more expensive to shape. If your phone or iPod body was made of it, the keys would chip the corners off it in no time.
Well, they don't make affordable things "scratch proof". It's usually only used in small areas like the inserts over displays on your phone. This means you don't use much of it, and making flat sheets is cheap and easy.
Well, floating is accomplished by weighing less than the water a device displaces. Since the contents of the device are pretty much fixed (flash, CPU, display, etc.), the weight of the contents is fixed too. So in order to make it float (if it doesn't already) that means you have to make it bigger.
Apple isn't much of a "make it bigger" kind of company.
It'd be easy to make a case for the nano that contains enough empty space (well, air) to make it low density enough to float. And you could use that space for one of those connector systems that lets the main box remain sealed while still allowing headphones to be connected. This would be the best of both worlds, the device would be small when the case isn't on, and when you go near water, you put the case on and it's now waterproof and floats, but perhaps a little bigger.
Most GPS units are not waterproof and do not float.
You're going to cheap out on the CF readers, when the CF cards themselves will cost you a good $500+?
You're talking about $2000 minimum just to get off the ground here. How does the poor man afford this?
I can't imagine how the write performance would do anything but stink. In theory enough flash in parallel should have decent write performance, but I doubt this setup will manage to extract it.
It will likely let you use your laptop as a headset/speaker for your phone, but not use your phone as a headset/speaker for your laptop.
I say this because although virtually all Bluetooth phones will USE a Bluetooth headset, virtually none of them (none I've seen) will BE a Bluetooth headset. There's just not way to get most phones to pretend to be on a call (turn on the speaker and mic) and send the data elsewhere to be transported.
As to using your computer as a handsfree system for yor phone, that's been possible for some time already. The question is, why would you do it?
LBA48 won't be a big deal for laptops, because this problem has already been solved for 3.5" drives and desktops, and that hardware (Firewire bridge chips) and software is already there. It's not like Windows has one driver for 3.5" ATA devices and another for 2.5" ATA devices. The only part that is specific to laptops that I can think of it the BIOS. I guess it's possible that the BIOSes in even recent laptops haven't been updated to boot from LBA48 devices simply because they didn't have to. But I expect most of them (at least in the last year) will be okay.
Your question is pretty strange. As if people didn't search before google?
I know Google when they came on the scene were far better than everyone else, they really did a much better job.
But that doesn't mean that worthwhile search tools didn't exist before Google.
I really should have put something after my knock-off comment in my post. Google has done some great sites. Few original ones, but a couple great ones. But still, that doesn't mean MS can't come in even later and out-do Google. And before you spout about how that's impossible, think of Orkut. It sucks. Think of MSN Earth, which has much higher res sat pics than Google maps.
Okay, so anyway, MS is going to try to compete with Google. I'm glad of that. I can pick and choose whichever ones I want, so competition is a good thing.
Finally, Google came onto the scene with a great search tool. Remember when every time you would search on Google, the best result was #1? How long has it been since that was the rule? It's not their fault, it's because so many people are trying to skew Google's results for profit, and it's working. But by the same token, it means that any competitor who comes into the marketplace with a new scheme stands some chance of beating Google on results quality simply because they aren't the ones the bozos are optimizing to beat.
Really, if you want to transfer things to and from your phone for free, it'd be best to show phone companies that it matters to you by buying a phone which doesn't have these restrictions.
I have no problems moving files up and down to my phone with Bluetooth, because I bought a phone which could do so.
Note that following these rules will lock you out of almost all Verizon phones. I solved this problem by leaving Verizon.
v. To introduce a knock-off of someone else's web service months after they introduce it. Often used in relation to Yahoo, or even AOL.
So, to out-Google Google would probably be just to introduce a knockoff of a Google service months after even Google got around to doing it.
It seems like Microsoft is heading down this track. So the description of out-Googling Google makes sense to me.
Perhaps you've never used one.
Buckling spring is the best keyboards ever. And actually, the best feel ever AFACT is on the original 84-key PC keyboard and 85-key PC/AT keyboards with 10 F-keys on the left. The 84-key had a bad layout (backslash key in an insane location), and many people like a separate numeric keypad. So a 101-key (PS/2) model M is a great compromise. Perhaps overall, the best keyboard ever made.
IBM made them for the RS/6000s for some time, I have one of the last ones. It is a prized possession.
If there is keyboard equivalent to a type 57 Bugatti, the 84-key buckling key (Model M) PC keyboard would probably be it.
Transfer rate and latency aren't the same thing. You can definitely have huge transfer rates without high rotation rate. But you absolutely cannot reduce latency without increasing rotation rate, at least not without adding more head arms.
So there is a valid reason to go fast. I wouldn't be surprised if HD PVRs needed 7200RPM in order to keep their buffers from overflowing (given reasonable amounts of RAM), but I don't know it is actually true.
Sorry about that.
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http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/9
And note that these tests were though the headphone jack, since the original iPod had no line out.
This was done years ago.
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It did very, very well on all those regular THD, SNR, etc. tests. "better many CD players". Given the limitations of the size and availability of power (battery can't come close to a wall socket in ability to deliver oomph), it is a near miracle.
Of course, much of that miracle came from Wolfson (the DAC used in the iPod), and so all the iPod competitors can do the same if they just get the analog parts on the output amps right.
But anyone who says the iPod is objectively bad on audio quality is off their rocker. It may be bested in some areas, but the differences between the iPod and its competitors (especially in the negative direction) are miniscule compared to the overall excellence of any of these devices.
I mean, seriously, bitching about 96dB S/N instead of 100dB? The average background sound level in a room is 40dB or more, so you can't get even 96dB S/N to your ears unless the peaks of the music are hitting 136dB. Is your system doing that? And besides that, these S/N tests show the iPod clears 100dB by a little bit anyway.
As to your bass compaints (which are spot on), perhaps under all this pressure, Apple has seen the light with the Nano, we'll have to see some measurements. Note that into a high impedance (line level) input, even the mini has no bass problems, even from the headphone out. Because the output caps create a rolloff filter with the impedance of the load. On 16 or 32 ohm headphones, the rolloff might be distressingly high (40Hz?), but when you kick the load impedance up to 1K ohms, as a line level input is, the rolloff retreats down to below 10Hz.
Well, mostly. Apparently, they think the water has more inertia than the air, so when the storm dropped to cat 4, it maintained most of it's cat 5 force in terms of surge. True? I dunno. But that's what I heard.
Also, the spinning direction of the storm means the winds (and thus waves) were blowing right into Lake Ponch, piling up even more water there than you would otherwise expect.
A CF card would only fit in there in one direction, and there would be no room for the mobo below or above it, the top case above it, and only barely for the metal back below it. And you'd have no room left for the battery.
It is only just over twice the size of a CF card.
Are you sure you have a real grasp of how small this thing is?
I say I don't love NO, and you transform that into that I don't care about it. That's an interesting way of taking it. You started this "my city is awesome" contest by saying everyone loves NO, not me. So I don't love NO. Sue me.
What kind of relativism is this anyway? If Gary, Indiana floods out, that's okay, because no one loves it. But if NO floods, we'd better get right on it? Apparently I can't call myself a "patriot" because I don't hold NO above other cities.
The rail system idea is interesting, but I don't think it's worthwhile. Repairing a busted levee (or retaining wall, as the case may be) while the water is flowing over it (and over the tracks) isn't easy. In this case, it probably would have been near impossible. It'd really be better just to fix the system so the walls won't break.
Eh, who am I kidding? Due to the pumping the ground is subsiding, this problem gets worse all the time. Really, the fix is to raise the ground level so that the pumps can be turned off. Then the ground will stop subsiding and there will be have fewer problems next time this happens. Where to get all that dirt, I dunno. Moving it wouldn't be easy either, but it'd be easier than digging a hole and then building a city over it!
I still think your hole idea is crazy. And no, you can't fit a significant portion of Lake Ponch in there either. The lake is 10x the size of the entire land area of NO. And the Bayou area of NO is what, 1/8th of it? So, if you dug down 8 meters, you could hold 10% of the volume of lake Ponch. That'd be les than 1/3rd of the surge alone, forgetting the water already there. All it would do is give maybe a couple hours before the water started rising. But since it'd been 5 days now since the water started rising and people are still there, do you think a few more hours would have helped?
Really, it'd be most important just to get everyone out. People just didn't leave because they've been through this before, and they don't feel like leaving their pets behind, spending money and time to get far away just to come back. Well, they were wrong about that this time, and it cost them. But building holes won't fix that.
You are blaming the Corps here. They were tasked with building protection to a Cat 3 hurricane. They did. That's the end of it. Expecting protection for a cat 3 to work on a cat 4/5 is ridiculous. It's like buying a 4-cylinder car and then complaining it isn't the V6 version. You asked for the 4-cylinder version, you paid for the 4-cylinder version. If you needed a 6-cylinder, why did you buy the 4-cylinder? And it isn't as if the Corps was hiding that the protection wasn't enough, everyone knew. A band even wrote a pop song about it! Someone didn't find the problem a big enough concern, or more likely couldn't find the money to pay for it.
The Corps and everyone else knew the walls were only good for a cat 3. No one bellied up the money for more protection. So you get what you asked and paid for.
And I don't like Rumsfeld either, but this has been a problem since before 2001, if Katrina had blown through in August 2000, the problem would have been just as bad, and you'd have no way to blame Rumsfeld.
I just don't get that. It does have the tempting thing of keeping the pumps above water longer. But if that's a problem, just build levees around the pumps and put pumps above the pumps to keep the pumps dry.
As to your reservoir, you are not going to make a dent in the amount of water in the Mississippi, let alone the ocean, by digging a hole for it to flow into. There was plenty more water available to fill the city, and it would have still done so.
Will it buy time? Perhaps. But people didn't leave. They're still there! Buying time isn't going to help. If the levees break and people don't leave, they're boned.
Blaming the Corps is ridiculous. The #1 problem was the huge hurricane, the #2 problem was everyone knew this would happen, including the Corps, and no one took it seriously enough. It didn't take a lot of research to find that those walls were built for a cat 3, not a cat 4 with a cat 5 surge.
The city wasn't safe for the hit it took. That's it. It's not the Corps fault, with the proper money and time they probably could have made it safe for a cat 4 or perhaps a low cat 5. But they weren't given the money, nor tasked to do it.
Where do you get this "city everyone loves so much" and "so important to our economy" stuff. Are the refineries in the city limits all of a sudden? The actual hurricane damage (as opposed to later flood damage) in the other areas was what really hurt the economy. Not damage to a city with 33% of its citizens below the poverty level. Although it would suck if the Mississippi were no longer navigable.
No way. Let's play the satellite map game. There's no way the average city is 60% road. I know there's a lot of roads, it's really distressingly high actually, but not 60%. Even if you count driveways and parking lots (essentially then counting all paved surfaces) I can't imagine it makes 60%.
As to your other stuff, you do make a lot of good points. However, we make all our electricy from petroleum. Nuclear power is dead, and green sources just don't make enough to make a dent (but it's rising at least).
As to it costing 3x as much, I could easily say it costs 5x as much. I do own a 5 person car. And although the government is hiding some of the costs of running a car, it also does so for trains too. And the train I would possibly take, it runs on Diesel fuel. Although they are trying to electrify it right now, mostly for speed, partially for efficiency.
And yet we have camp X-Ray.
TANSTAAFL. Even with streetcars.
That's simply not possible. Even if the trolleycars were run on solar power (which didn't really exist back then), just maintaining them creates pollution.
I would also question why the link thinks that these companies would have been profitable when bus and light rail systems are not. It's a more competitive market now, if these systems still existed, they would certainly require subsidies to compete with cars. I mean, I and 3 friends are going up to San Francisco next week. If we were all to take Caltrain (which is subsidized) it would cost about $36 for us to go. We can take a car for under $10, even adding in the actual purchase cost of the car, I would imagine its under $20. And my car isn't the cheapest or more efficient.
So, GM's practices or no, there's no guarantee these systems would be profitable today.
It's kind of cool though, I recognize that bridge in the picture. I'm gonna go over and check it out, see if I can see the old wire supports like it says.
Votes for Supreme Court justices are the most politicized votes of all in Congress (except perhaps impeachment). The whole thing is a sham, it'll go right down party lines, no matter who Bush picks. Oh, they'll talk like they're evaluating the candidate, but it's a sham.
And heck, he's a lame duck, it's difficult to hurt him in any way.
Tell the difference between the DoI and the Constitution I mean (wonder how I got modded up!). I guess I blew that in bolstering my point, but it still stands somewhat. The Constitution was considered so vague by the colonies that they didn't ratify it until there were ammendments spelling at least a few important things out explicitly.
But it still says a few things (besides a slave is worth 60% of a white man), things that do matter. And are people just going to bitch every time a judge finds that its content actually means something?
Perhaps some people will. Well, they'd do well to get the people together and fix it. The Constitution has been ammended before, it can be done again.
I think it's personally quite obvious that the Constutition trump card was not supposed to be played in limited enumerated circumstances. It should be played whenever it applies, and not when it does. But that's the rub. One person thinks it doesn't apply, and blames judges. Pardon me, "unelected" judges. You know, the ones who are unelected because it says that in the Constitution (at least at the Federal level). When these people complain about judges being unelected, they are trying to undermine the Constitution itself. (And for that matter, you don't see Bush refusing to appoint Supreme Court Judges based upon these "unelected" complaints.)
Really, it all doesn't surprise me at all. When Bush stood in front of the press and said he felt there was a higher law of the land than the Constitution, and reached down and brought up a Bible, that pretty much said it all right there.
Bush, for some reason thinks his religion is good enough for everyone and so we should all follow it. If his religion has a problem with stem cell research, then he puts a major crimp in stem cell research. If his religion is against abortion, then we change the courts ASAP so that they can overturn that too. And then of course we should be able to pray to his God in our schools too.
It drives me nuts. Escaping others telling you how to live your life on religious grounds was a big reason this country was formed, and why we have a separation of church and state. To see it all undone distresses me greatly.
I would love to see a return to a leader who, although religious, doesn't feel like he should invoke his religion as a governing principle above the Constitution, nor thinks that we should rejigger our laws to match his religious beliefs (like they do in Fundamentalist countries). You know, someone like George H. W. Bush (president #41). How this apple fell from that tree I just can't understand.
Anyhow, "strict constructionism" just doesn't work. The law isn't explicit enough. The law has to be interpreted. Or else perhaps the 2nd ammendment doesn't apply to anything but matchlock muskets, since that's all that existed when it was written. And you do realize that nowhere in the constitution does it say women are equal to men, only that black men (slaves) are equal to other men. Are we to supposed that women aren't equal because it isn't explicit in there?
Let's not get stuck in the past here, as an excuse to change a few unhappy decisions in the present. Let's not lock ourselves into 18th Century principles.
All this religious nuttery and "it must be as it is written" crap is really starting to freak me out. I mean, why did we go into Iraq? To stop Muslim Fundamentalists who want to make their religion the law of the land based upon strict, outdated interpretations of a 200 year old text? Substitute Christian for Muslim and I swear we're heading to the same awful place.
So sad. I won't sleep well tonight. I mean even worse than usual.
Whatever happened to real conservatism? The Republicans left it behind in favor of telling everyone what to do. All we have left is Pat Buchanan, who isn't doing us any favors either.