Only the nerdiest child is going to have any fun/interest-in doing anything with Excel VBA and if that were the case, he'd probably already be trying to learn to program.
I think Python is a good start if the kid is interested in making websites (even PHP wouldn't be bad). My favorite language is Perl, but teaching him that first would probably cause him to go prematurely bald or start crying.
I originally started learning programming in 5th grade in QBasic. I got to middle school, and they were using Apple Basic on Apple IIe's (this was in 1997, yeah, I know... wtf?). I really didn't see the point of learning an essentially dead language on ancient computers, so I started learning Visual Basic to write AOL hacking programs at home. After that I started on Perl and PHP, and databases and web design. In college (the one year I went) they had us working in Java, and I got it, but I didn't particularly like it.
Basically, I learned most of the programming skills I've got on my own at home, and what I picked up on and what I didn't were always based on one simple thing - if I was interested, I figured it out really quickly. If I wasn't interested, I'd either have to slave away forcing myself to, or I just said screw it, I don't care enough (that's where C++ went). It's been said in other comments and I totally agree - if there isn't real interest, then the kid won't go anywhere with it.
Not only did reading your post make me want to shoot myself, I think I lost intelligence while doing it. Please tell me you did all that on purpose. Please.
I may be wrong, but I have heard that paying off credit cards every month (and thus not accruing any finance charges) is viewed negatively by financial institutions, and may actually hurt your credit score instead of improving it. They aren't making any money off of you, so they won't raise your credit limit (and why would they need to, if you aren't making purchases that raise your balance close to the limit anyway). While no one wants to be paying huge interest fees, if what I've heard is correct, you may want to just pay the minimum payment once every few months, allowing the interest fees to be charged, and then pay things off. If I'm wrong, I'd love to hear it - but if what I've heard is correct, then I'd hate for someone to put a bunch of effort into raising their credit rating and limits by paying everything off every month, only to find out that it's no different than when they first got the credit line.
This reminds me of Joshua A. Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico who issued his own currency, which was actually accepted by a lot of places he went, on par with the US dollar. Was it legal currency? Not exactly - I'm sure he couldn't pay taxes with it, but businesses accepted it in trade with him anyway.
Two drives use twice as much juice and make twice as much heat as one. 5 drives increase your carbon footprint, heat dissipation and financial outlay even further, and require a more highly-cooled enclosure AND warm up your den/living room/home - which you cool once more with the A/C in the summer. If you do the math, you'll probably pay more for running the disks over their service life than you do to buy them.
Sure, you'll have to cool it in the summer, but imagine not needing to heat your house at all during the winter because of your massive RAID:)
unless, of course, the parallel universe you chose happens to be one which also falls into a black hole...
I, personally, decided the best bet is to just let the data go. Apparently, in this universe, I wasn't meant to have it anymore. If I were to go and try to get it back, it could collapse the entire space-time continuum, and I (or anyone else) really wouldn't have much use for it anymore. Except the porn... I have that backed up on HDDs in every parallel universe. Of course.
Even simpler ones can be done in no time at all: Uneducated people who run market stalls can calculate change from $50 of sixteen figs very quickly, yet you ask them what 50-(cost-of-fig * 15) is, and they'll take a lot longer.
No they can't, silly... they just remember from the last guy that came and bought sixteen figs. The cent amount is trivial, it'd be the same as when someone paid with a $10, or $20, or whatever. The dollar amount is just a very quick subtraction, since the cents are already taken care of. Besides, they probably have a neat thing called a cash register in front of them, and that just tells them how much to give you without them having to think about it at all.
Your point is somewhat valid - give them a written math problem and their eyes would glaze over, but even given the fig problem, what they're doing is really more of a learned-by-repetition thing than a computation.
Two AAs can only put out ~3v, while four AAAs put out ~6v. The two AAs may have higher capacities [mAh] than even the four AAAs, but if the device needs 6v giving it 3v isn't going to cut it.
I've recharged normal non-rechargeable alkaline AA's [Duracell and Energizer] in my Radioshack 3-hr NiCd charger before. It's important to only do it a couple times, because they will start leaking if you do it more than that, or at the very least the charge just won't take anymore. It was kind of an experiment, and because of the obvious hazards, I was quite careful with it (I even taped a nice little plastic "shield" [aka a small tupperware dish] to the wall around the outlet, just in case). It did work, but they did start to leak after a few recharges. In any case, I don't really recommend it, they never lasted as long on the re-charges as they would have new off the shelf anyway. It was interesting to know that it was possible though.
There's a huge difference in weights of different 32" CRTs - just in this thread I've seen from ~90 lbs. to your 161 lbs.
Mine was nothing special, not "flat", just a normal CRT TV made about 8 years ago, I'd estimate it was probably 120lbs or so, and while not something I'd move daily, it was manageable when I was moving it into my dorm room (from the bed of my dad's truck to the elevator and then to my room), and subsequently moving it into the floor's lounge a few times during the year (since it happened to be the biggest TV on the floor, so much the better for group movie sessions and such [of course for the 'big' get-togethers we just went to the first floor lounge where there was a projector:) ] )
Anyway, my point is, it's do-able, and I did it. The GP didn't specify in the post that his was 16:9, and didn't give a weight. Even given the ~90 lbs that the GP posted in another comment in this thread, the fact that it was a 16:9 CRT TV makes me concede that I'd at least have two people, though at that point I'd think it would be pretty manageable, if it weren't for the stairs.
The "trick" is to have the front of the TV [where all the weight really is] facing towards you. Just lean it against your chest with your arms mostly under it at the edges, and rely on your balance to keep you upright. Again [re: another reply of mine in this sub-thread], this was with a 4:3. With a 16:9, the sheer awkwardness of it would almost require two people, and stairs would certainly be a bitch in either case (though I think it would be pretty manageable with a 4:3).
I'll give you that mine was 4:3, and as such a fair bit of difference in glass-weight. I wasn't going up any stairs either. Still, I'd think with two of you it'd be manageable - though not convenient by any means.
Then there's the fact that the two of us nearly did ourselves serious injury taking my 32" CRT up the stairs.
I'm 21 years old/5'7" [~170cm]/160 lbs. [~73kg] and a generally sedentary lazy ass and I didn't have much trouble moving a 32" CRT by myself. Was it made of lead?
Parent wasn't talking about free entertainment, he was talking about buying DRM'd music. One should [theoretically] be able to buy music free from DRM. Buying DRM'd music is bad because you're locking yourself into a format which may cease to be supported. That's where the PlaysForSure crowd are right now. They bought music DRM'd with PlaysForSure, and now many want to upgrade to a new player, maybe a Zune - but they can't. All the music they paid for is worthless on a Zune. Apple won't necessarily do this with ITunes, but do you really see them still releasing devices supporting legacy [circa 2006, perhaps] ITunes DRM'd music in 10 years? [Maybe?] 20? [Doubtful.] 50? [Not bloody likely]. The point is, you buy a CD [and at least in the good old days before Sony dropping rootkits and such], and you can do what you want with it. Rip it, copy it, record it onto a cassette tape, use it as a decorative coaster - whatever you want. You buy DRM'd music, and you do only what the publisher wants you to do with it, nothing more.
And sure, you could say 'well, when it's not supported anymore, just crack the DRM and do whatever with it' but if that's the case you may as well not have bought it in the first place, since you're still breaking laws in the long run.
The thing is, [as far as my understanding goes] the PSU only generates as much power as is required from it - you're not really wasting any energy costs by getting a 600w PSU over a 400w PSU. You'll pay more for the higher wattage PSU, but that's only a one-time thing, and in any case, buying a cheap generic PSU is a bad idea. I've got a Thermaltake PurePower PSU and I have absolutely no worries about leaving my computer on during a lightning storm*. Sure, I paid out the ass for the PSU considering I could have gotten a generic one for like 1/4th the cost, but would I trust it during a lightning storm? Probably not.
Lots of people count their PSUs as a 'must have' but 'unimportant' part of their computer - but an exceptional power supply can prevent a lot of lock-ups, random crashes, and death of parts [CPU, Mobo, RAM, video card etc.] which would plague someone who just put out the bare minimum for their PSU.
*- I don't recommend anyone leaving their computer on/plugged in during a lightning storm, just sharing my personal experiences.
3000RPM eh? Bad boy? Pshaw... I had a 7200RPM Thermaltake Dragon Orb a few years ago. Granted, it was really high pitched and fucking annoying to have in my bedroom, but 3000RPM ain't shit:)
Which of course made me think of something - if the secret service [fbi, cia etc.] is knocking on your door make sure that you totally trash your backups too. In this situation, I'd imagine that thermite would be almost your only option. It's not like you can keep the FBI busy for three hours while your HDD wipes itself, and the fire that you set to melt your kiddie-porn DVD collection may be a little suspicious.
So, put a nice big thermite charge [again, not referring to an explosive] on top of your kiddie porn DVD collection which is on top of your kiddie porn containing hdd and as soon as anyone knocks on your door run to your computer and light*
* - I am not condoning looking at kiddie porn! Also not responsible if you melt your DVDs and HDD when grandma comes to visit.
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Only the nerdiest child is going to have any fun/interest-in doing anything with Excel VBA and if that were the case, he'd probably already be trying to learn to program. I think Python is a good start if the kid is interested in making websites (even PHP wouldn't be bad). My favorite language is Perl, but teaching him that first would probably cause him to go prematurely bald or start crying. I originally started learning programming in 5th grade in QBasic. I got to middle school, and they were using Apple Basic on Apple IIe's (this was in 1997, yeah, I know... wtf?). I really didn't see the point of learning an essentially dead language on ancient computers, so I started learning Visual Basic to write AOL hacking programs at home. After that I started on Perl and PHP, and databases and web design. In college (the one year I went) they had us working in Java, and I got it, but I didn't particularly like it. Basically, I learned most of the programming skills I've got on my own at home, and what I picked up on and what I didn't were always based on one simple thing - if I was interested, I figured it out really quickly. If I wasn't interested, I'd either have to slave away forcing myself to, or I just said screw it, I don't care enough (that's where C++ went). It's been said in other comments and I totally agree - if there isn't real interest, then the kid won't go anywhere with it.
Not only did reading your post make me want to shoot myself, I think I lost intelligence while doing it. Please tell me you did all that on purpose. Please.
I may be wrong, but I have heard that paying off credit cards every month (and thus not accruing any finance charges) is viewed negatively by financial institutions, and may actually hurt your credit score instead of improving it. They aren't making any money off of you, so they won't raise your credit limit (and why would they need to, if you aren't making purchases that raise your balance close to the limit anyway). While no one wants to be paying huge interest fees, if what I've heard is correct, you may want to just pay the minimum payment once every few months, allowing the interest fees to be charged, and then pay things off. If I'm wrong, I'd love to hear it - but if what I've heard is correct, then I'd hate for someone to put a bunch of effort into raising their credit rating and limits by paying everything off every month, only to find out that it's no different than when they first got the credit line.
This reminds me of Joshua A. Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico who issued his own currency, which was actually accepted by a lot of places he went, on par with the US dollar. Was it legal currency? Not exactly - I'm sure he couldn't pay taxes with it, but businesses accepted it in trade with him anyway.
that really sounds a lot like JBOD to me...
Two drives use twice as much juice and make twice as much heat as one. 5 drives increase your carbon footprint, heat dissipation and financial outlay even further, and require a more highly-cooled enclosure AND warm up your den/living room/home - which you cool once more with the A/C in the summer. If you do the math, you'll probably pay more for running the disks over their service life than you do to buy them.
Sure, you'll have to cool it in the summer, but imagine not needing to heat your house at all during the winter because of your massive RAIDunless, of course, the parallel universe you chose happens to be one which also falls into a black hole...
I, personally, decided the best bet is to just let the data go. Apparently, in this universe, I wasn't meant to have it anymore. If I were to go and try to get it back, it could collapse the entire space-time continuum, and I (or anyone else) really wouldn't have much use for it anymore. Except the porn... I have that backed up on HDDs in every parallel universe. Of course.
Your point is somewhat valid - give them a written math problem and their eyes would glaze over, but even given the fig problem, what they're doing is really more of a learned-by-repetition thing than a computation.
Two AAs can only put out ~3v, while four AAAs put out ~6v. The two AAs may have higher capacities [mAh] than even the four AAAs, but if the device needs 6v giving it 3v isn't going to cut it.
I've recharged normal non-rechargeable alkaline AA's [Duracell and Energizer] in my Radioshack 3-hr NiCd charger before. It's important to only do it a couple times, because they will start leaking if you do it more than that, or at the very least the charge just won't take anymore. It was kind of an experiment, and because of the obvious hazards, I was quite careful with it (I even taped a nice little plastic "shield" [aka a small tupperware dish] to the wall around the outlet, just in case). It did work, but they did start to leak after a few recharges. In any case, I don't really recommend it, they never lasted as long on the re-charges as they would have new off the shelf anyway. It was interesting to know that it was possible though.
There's a huge difference in weights of different 32" CRTs - just in this thread I've seen from ~90 lbs. to your 161 lbs.
:) ] )
Mine was nothing special, not "flat", just a normal CRT TV made about 8 years ago, I'd estimate it was probably 120lbs or so, and while not something I'd move daily, it was manageable when I was moving it into my dorm room (from the bed of my dad's truck to the elevator and then to my room), and subsequently moving it into the floor's lounge a few times during the year (since it happened to be the biggest TV on the floor, so much the better for group movie sessions and such [of course for the 'big' get-togethers we just went to the first floor lounge where there was a projector
Anyway, my point is, it's do-able, and I did it. The GP didn't specify in the post that his was 16:9, and didn't give a weight. Even given the ~90 lbs that the GP posted in another comment in this thread, the fact that it was a 16:9 CRT TV makes me concede that I'd at least have two people, though at that point I'd think it would be pretty manageable, if it weren't for the stairs.
The "trick" is to have the front of the TV [where all the weight really is] facing towards you. Just lean it against your chest with your arms mostly under it at the edges, and rely on your balance to keep you upright. Again [re: another reply of mine in this sub-thread], this was with a 4:3. With a 16:9, the sheer awkwardness of it would almost require two people, and stairs would certainly be a bitch in either case (though I think it would be pretty manageable with a 4:3).
I'll give you that mine was 4:3, and as such a fair bit of difference in glass-weight. I wasn't going up any stairs either. Still, I'd think with two of you it'd be manageable - though not convenient by any means.
Please try again.
Parent wasn't talking about free entertainment, he was talking about buying DRM'd music. One should [theoretically] be able to buy music free from DRM. Buying DRM'd music is bad because you're locking yourself into a format which may cease to be supported. That's where the PlaysForSure crowd are right now. They bought music DRM'd with PlaysForSure, and now many want to upgrade to a new player, maybe a Zune - but they can't. All the music they paid for is worthless on a Zune. Apple won't necessarily do this with ITunes, but do you really see them still releasing devices supporting legacy [circa 2006, perhaps] ITunes DRM'd music in 10 years? [Maybe?] 20? [Doubtful.] 50? [Not bloody likely]. The point is, you buy a CD [and at least in the good old days before Sony dropping rootkits and such], and you can do what you want with it. Rip it, copy it, record it onto a cassette tape, use it as a decorative coaster - whatever you want. You buy DRM'd music, and you do only what the publisher wants you to do with it, nothing more.
And sure, you could say 'well, when it's not supported anymore, just crack the DRM and do whatever with it' but if that's the case you may as well not have bought it in the first place, since you're still breaking laws in the long run.
yeah, but we were talking about processor fans, and [afaik] there really aren't many 120mm processor fans
The thing is, [as far as my understanding goes] the PSU only generates as much power as is required from it - you're not really wasting any energy costs by getting a 600w PSU over a 400w PSU. You'll pay more for the higher wattage PSU, but that's only a one-time thing, and in any case, buying a cheap generic PSU is a bad idea. I've got a Thermaltake PurePower PSU and I have absolutely no worries about leaving my computer on during a lightning storm*. Sure, I paid out the ass for the PSU considering I could have gotten a generic one for like 1/4th the cost, but would I trust it during a lightning storm? Probably not.
Lots of people count their PSUs as a 'must have' but 'unimportant' part of their computer - but an exceptional power supply can prevent a lot of lock-ups, random crashes, and death of parts [CPU, Mobo, RAM, video card etc.] which would plague someone who just put out the bare minimum for their PSU.
*- I don't recommend anyone leaving their computer on/plugged in during a lightning storm, just sharing my personal experiences.
3000RPM eh? Bad boy? Pshaw... I had a 7200RPM Thermaltake Dragon Orb a few years ago. Granted, it was really high pitched and fucking annoying to have in my bedroom, but 3000RPM ain't shit :)
Dragon Warrior 4 is excellent, in case you haven't played it
did it go beep-beep-beep-beep-beep? Was it a... bummer?
Which of course made me think of something - if the secret service [fbi, cia etc.] is knocking on your door make sure that you totally trash your backups too. In this situation, I'd imagine that thermite would be almost your only option. It's not like you can keep the FBI busy for three hours while your HDD wipes itself, and the fire that you set to melt your kiddie-porn DVD collection may be a little suspicious.
So, put a nice big thermite charge [again, not referring to an explosive] on top of your kiddie porn DVD collection which is on top of your kiddie porn containing hdd and as soon as anyone knocks on your door run to your computer and light*
* - I am not condoning looking at kiddie porn! Also not responsible if you melt your DVDs and HDD when grandma comes to visit.
just wondering - what type of industry [or in the gvmt] do you work in? If you're at liberty to say
it's not obscure if I recognize it from a Douglas Adams novel...
at which point we'll start lotteries where we know the results of the drawings before they're drawn... er... wait...