Part of it is that we rarely ever have quakes strong enough to feel here (the last I remember was 7 or 8 years ago, possibly longer, and I remember only three total) and part of it is we're aware of how old the structures here are, that much of Boston is built on top of landfill on top of wetlands on top of bedrock, so with old brick-and-mortar buildings on wooden stilts in wetlands on top of bedrock and almost 100% of structures built prior to 1976 not taking seismic stresses into account, plus with the region being long overdue for a major quake, Boston is a disaster waiting to happen.
Some buildings in Boston may have been damaged; probably due to settling of landfill and ancient wooden pilings under the older buildings. There are reports of a building having tilted and has been evacuated pending a building inspection.
Stuff like E-sata is locked out (a few other cable systems have it turned on)
That is something I miss about Adelphia - they had the e-sata ports enabled. When I call Comcast about it the answer is invariably "it's in beta" - riiight. In other words, it's enbled in the Adelphia markets they acquired, but not on the the nodes running off the heads Comcast deployed.
You would think they would enable it - instead of customers breaking DVRs to get upgrades, they can enable the e-sata ports and let the customer plug in larger hard drives. When I lived in an Adelphia town, I had a 1GB HDD attached to the DVR, which gave me five times the capacity the cable company delivers. It might sound like a ridiculous amount but when you consider how much disk space HD recordings take up, it really is not all that much space.
Other cable systems have auto HD where they can tune to the hd channel when you enter the old SD number. Comcast has the half backed pop up the ask you to hit a button to go the HD channels (does not show up all the time)
IMHO retaining SD channels is a good thing; you can stretch out capacity by recording SD rather than HD. Is there a difference in quality? There sure is. But honestly, I still think native HD is overrated. I'm still happy with upscaled DVD most of the time. I do buy Blu-Ray discs from time to time but even though the video quality is amazing, it does not impress me nearly as much as the upgrade from VHS (240-line-at-best-but-usually-smeared-and-bloomed resolution plus poorly-encoded Dolby Pro Logic) to DVD (480 lines of resolution with perfect color all the time plus Dolby Digital Surround, Dolby Digital Surround EX or DTS). Cable HD is generally over-compressed so you get MPEG blocking and color smearing, which decreases the apparent resolution, plus many cable providers only give you 720p, so you're looking at over-compressed 720p which may not look as good as DVD (480p) viewed at 1080p courtesy a high quality video scaler.
Honestly, I can't see the argument for a single bag. I travel with similar equipment and the last thing I want to do is add the weight of a laptop when I'm out photographing.
You put too much faith in hotel staff and even hotel safes.
Also, keep in mind many DSLR users carry three or more lenses since ultrazooms are a compromise at best; not good at landscape shots, not good at telephoto, and not good at macro. So, even if you choose quality zoom lenses, figure on one wide zoom for landscape shots, one zoom telephoto, and one to cover the middle range. I have a very good camera bag which can handle three lenses, lens and sensor cleaning tools, remote shutter release/intervalometer, spare batteries, polarizing filters, an organizer for CF cards, plus a flash or two along with a small diffuser. I made the mistake of hiking up a small mountain with all the gear in that shoulder bag and I was hurting for days!
I've been checking out local stores for backpacks for a while; Calumet Boston had a relatively small selection (I have not been there since they moved to new space) and all of the smaller botique stores (Ritz, mom & pops, etc) and big box stores (Worst Buy, Sprawl*Mart, etc) have pretty crappy selections as well, intended more for the folks who have one ultrazoom lens, or a bridge camera. So, I'm going to be reading this thread pretty thoroughly since I am also looking for backpack suggestions.:)
They won't give iPhone or iPad users an SD slot or the ability to replace the battery without completely dismantling the phone, but will give us a gas cartridge?
think the challenge here is not to design a container that won't explode, but to design a container to keep environmentalists' brains from exploding when they hear the words 'car' and 'radioactiver' used together.
Despite their name, rare earth elements (with the exception of the radioactive promethium) are relatively plentiful in the Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million (similar to copper). However, because of their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found in concentrated and economically exploitable forms known as rare earth minerals.[3] It was the very scarcity of these minerals (previously called "earths") that led to the term "rare earth". The first such mineral discovered was gadolinite, a compound of cerium, yttrium, iron, silicon and other elements. This mineral was extracted from a mine in the village of Ytterby in Sweden; many of the rare earth elements bear names derived from this location.
Phono preamps, effects pedals, and vocal processors (for that nice "warm" sounding second harmonic distortion), guitar amps, very high end power amps (I'll pass on tube amps take a nice clean Class D receiver/amp myself - I'm about to junk my old beloved Class A amp. If I want the "warm" sound on musical sources I'll use DSP, and from my keyboards, effects pedals or in-synth DSP), CRT televisions in monitors (in basements, garages, kids' rooms), any microwave oven (the magnetron is a vacuum tube at the heart of it), and so on.
The vacuum tube is far from dead. It is just becoming more expensive as use continues to become a niche product, but it will likely never be a dead tech.
Even if it did use real HIV, in many cases the life-span for HIV is around 24 years after infection in the US.
Even so, if this "harmless form of HIV" does mutate back into the AIDS-causing variant and gives you the average 24 years to live after you've beat the cancer, you're cured of cancer but can't be intimate with your wife or husband or domesti^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H (fuck political correctness, let's just say SO) without infecting them. Is it really worth the cure?
The more obvious question is: why not go somewhere that fast?
Have you ever been in a car at over 200mph? I have (I was the passenger not the driver) and it's an absolute blast; you're traveling a football field's length per second at that speed and it's amazing. I've driven a measly 185mph several times and even that is fantastic even out west where all you see is cornfields and sand and rocks, and mountains in the distance. It's a damned shame we don't have an autobahn-like road system. Our (rural) highways were designed for those speeds from the beginning but thanks to incompetence and political greed we need to lower driving requirements to the lowest common denominator (our driving tests consist of driving around a block), and also enhance revenue through unreasonable 55mph-70mph limits on most rural highways. The "unlimited by day" and/or "reasonable and prudent" speed "limits" in Montana and Arizona are history now.:-(
It's not just a matter of fun either, but convenience. Why should it take two or three days to drive cross country, when if traveling at high speed on limited-access highways one could conceivably travel from the East Coast to West Coast in just over 10 hours - about the same time that the inconvenience of air flight takes when you factor in check-in, the federally-mandated pornographic photo shoot or sexual molestation, retrieving your luggage, then getting your rental car, and so on.
Now when it comes to flying, if you could travel across the country at 13,000 mph, you could be on the opposite coast in 10 minutes (or from New York to London in 16 and a half minutes) - so you could conceivably check in (get there an hour or two early) and if all you bring is carry-on (because your business will be completed in time to catch the 10-minute flight home before dinner!) like a laptop, you won't even have to retrieve luggage. Be across the country two and a half hours after booking your flight, go to your meeting (or thanksgiving dinner, or whatever) then be home just a few hours later. Time is precious and is the one commodity you can never get back, so why waste more time than you have to?
It's also a fairly trivial exercise to make those hidden BSD subsystem and "dot" files to display in finder. There is nothing wrong with simplifying a GUI, as long as the means exists to enable power users and/or system admins to get access to re-enable the more "dangerous" features and access everything. Some desktop environments fail at this, including on Linux. (Gnome, I am glaring at you here!)
Oh the solution to your crazy capitalist idea is obvious: the monopolies will simply buy the licenses for various regions, thereby preserving the caps and not improving their networks, all the while boasting of more and more services with higher prices, but in actuality continue to deliver less and less.
The problem was the choice was between two politicians, not statesmen (public servants). Ron Paul would have been a better choice but unfortunately few are willing to chance a vote on a third option so we feed back into the system.
This whole thing is our own fault. Why? Because decades ago we stopped electing statesmen who understand that the marking of a good leader is a servant mentality, and instead we vote elitist career politicians into office.
Until we start voting sensibly and kick out every last bought-and-paid-for politician, we will continue to have no one to blame but ourselves.
I got last year's model sub at 69.7% off off, or $350.00
I'm still debating options but the other speakers won't be $100. I'm going reference series - this year's model, so it's going to be a minimum of $250 each (so 6*250), and more like $350 or $450 (the hold up on my decision is finding someone who has the RF-42 II, RF-52 II, RF-62 II and equivalent RC and RS models in stock so I can do an A/B/C/X comparison)e. Mid-range in the market place.
All the same, there are options which are vastly cheaper and still sound pretty decent, so I still say you are not looking hard enough. I was at Best Buy to check out Mangolia today (of course as I suspected they don't carry the top Elite receiver, nor the higher end Klipsch lines, just energy. Even lower end than Synergy - in their Mangolia section. WTF? They've taken the Mangolia name and trashed it) and there were plenty of cheap 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 options. There are a lot of cheap options that sound good for the money especially if you're willing to forgo features.
I think one of the biggest issues is the gap in price between good products and low end stuff. I want my music to sound good and I'm willing to buy something that is 3x the cost of the everyday / low end equipment. But instead I'm given the choice between low end equipment or pro-awesome-blow-your-mind stuff that is 10 times more expensive, with nothing in between. I would love the more expensive stuff, but I just can't afford a 10,000 worth of stereo gear.
Seriously? That wasn't the case when I bought my current Elite receiver (I like receivers - slightly less rat's nest, and fewer components to fit in limited space). The DSP board in my VSX-26TX finally gave up the ghost so I sent it out for repair, and will be retiring it in favor of the SC-37 in the near future. I've gotten prices between $1200 and $1800 and note that there are far more expensive receivers as well as much, much cheaper receivers (starting around $100.00?!?!). There is not this big huge gap between crap, okay, and really good receivers. Maybe there is for preamps and amplifiers, but I won't go with a fully separate system until I can afford to build my dream house.
Also I am looking at Klipsch speakers - they have a full range of offerings between $100 each (Synergy series I think?) and $20,000 each (Palladium series). I bought some Reference speakers already and will be buying at least five more after I decide which vendor I'm buying the Elite from. I was very skeptical of class D amps rather than Class A but after hearing it, I'd have to say that if it's a step backward, it's not even noticeable, and it will save a heck of a lot on the electric bill (and on HVAC load)
At any rate, there is no 10x gap. Sure the receiver I am looking at does cost 10x the entry level stuff, but there is at least 12 other offerings at every imaginable price step between the entry level POS and the SC-37 in the Pioneer line alone. When you include other brands in the comparison (Denon, Onkyo, Yamaha, and so on) the selection is immense and covers the full price spectrum.
Also I'll probably never spend more than $1800-$2500 on a receiver; after all, it doesn't earn me money, and by even $2,000 you have arrived at a point of diminishing returns. I also can't see choosing Palladium series speakers over the Reference series, except bragging rights. Maybe if my day job were sound engineering I could see it, but otherwise, no.
Funny thing though; ever talk to anyone who drones on endlessly about hi fi gear? Try this sometime: pick a tone generator app for your iPhone or Android - even a dog whistle app will do, and put it on continuous, max volume, and start around 20kHz and work your way down. Chances are, you'll get down to 4.5kHz or 5.5kHz before the self-proclaimed audiophile can even hear it, then you inform them that it's been on all along and they can hear only to 4500hz, and it makes no sense for them to spend thousands on tweeters (It's funny to see their reaction, especially if you've already told them you're not interested in hearing about their $12,000 speakers!). I've taken care of my hearing and can hear to 17.5kHz, and yet I won't go overboard on a system. I just want to hear DSotM and Meddle at their finest, and have a decent home theater, and an entire system totalling under $5K will do that just as well as a system retailing for $100K in an average living room, as far as I am concerned.
If you can't find gear at a price point between $100 and $1,000, or between $1,000 and $10,000, I'm afraid you haven't bothered to shop for audio/AV gear in a very long time. The selection isn't lacking.
I did too! It's not hard to spot fake reviews!! I'll be sure to spot more in the future!
It's easy - fake reviews are overly-enthusiastic, and some of them go as far as to slam other brands. Real positive reviews are usually more sedate, little over-use of exclamation points!! and usually point out shortcomings of a product. Also, companies who astroturf usually submit multiple reviews, and it's usually posted in the same wording and typing style, which makes the fake reviews stick out even more. That's why when shopping for high ticket items I tend to read the negative reviews as well, and pay particular attention to longer reviews since fewer astroturfers invest the time in complete reviews.
Slashdot Mirror
Part of it is that we rarely ever have quakes strong enough to feel here (the last I remember was 7 or 8 years ago, possibly longer, and I remember only three total) and part of it is we're aware of how old the structures here are, that much of Boston is built on top of landfill on top of wetlands on top of bedrock, so with old brick-and-mortar buildings on wooden stilts in wetlands on top of bedrock and almost 100% of structures built prior to 1976 not taking seismic stresses into account, plus with the region being long overdue for a major quake, Boston is a disaster waiting to happen.
This is the building:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=111+devonshire+street+boston+ma&hl=en&ll=42.357169,-71.0573&spn=0.000746,0.001202&sll=42.357169,-71.0573&sspn=0.000746,0.001202&vpsrc=6&gl=us&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=42.357249,-71.057303&panoid=eIpAhc0HiY6VKt-IroN3fg&cbp=13,280.84,,0,-0.5
The building has just been cleared for reoccupation; the initial report of the building having shifted has proven false.
Some buildings in Boston may have been damaged; probably due to settling of landfill and ancient wooden pilings under the older buildings. There are reports of a building having tilted and has been evacuated pending a building inspection.
I had a 1GB HDD attached to the DVR /s/1GB/1TB/
That is something I miss about Adelphia - they had the e-sata ports enabled. When I call Comcast about it the answer is invariably "it's in beta" - riiight. In other words, it's enbled in the Adelphia markets they acquired, but not on the the nodes running off the heads Comcast deployed.
You would think they would enable it - instead of customers breaking DVRs to get upgrades, they can enable the e-sata ports and let the customer plug in larger hard drives. When I lived in an Adelphia town, I had a 1GB HDD attached to the DVR, which gave me five times the capacity the cable company delivers. It might sound like a ridiculous amount but when you consider how much disk space HD recordings take up, it really is not all that much space.
IMHO retaining SD channels is a good thing; you can stretch out capacity by recording SD rather than HD. Is there a difference in quality? There sure is. But honestly, I still think native HD is overrated. I'm still happy with upscaled DVD most of the time. I do buy Blu-Ray discs from time to time but even though the video quality is amazing, it does not impress me nearly as much as the upgrade from VHS (240-line-at-best-but-usually-smeared-and-bloomed resolution plus poorly-encoded Dolby Pro Logic) to DVD (480 lines of resolution with perfect color all the time plus Dolby Digital Surround, Dolby Digital Surround EX or DTS). Cable HD is generally over-compressed so you get MPEG blocking and color smearing, which decreases the apparent resolution, plus many cable providers only give you 720p, so you're looking at over-compressed 720p which may not look as good as DVD (480p) viewed at 1080p courtesy a high quality video scaler.
I'd post something worthwhile but I need to take this call. . .
Did you accidentally the post button while typing that post?
You put too much faith in hotel staff and even hotel safes.
Also, keep in mind many DSLR users carry three or more lenses since ultrazooms are a compromise at best; not good at landscape shots, not good at telephoto, and not good at macro. So, even if you choose quality zoom lenses, figure on one wide zoom for landscape shots, one zoom telephoto, and one to cover the middle range. I have a very good camera bag which can handle three lenses, lens and sensor cleaning tools, remote shutter release/intervalometer, spare batteries, polarizing filters, an organizer for CF cards, plus a flash or two along with a small diffuser. I made the mistake of hiking up a small mountain with all the gear in that shoulder bag and I was hurting for days!
I've been checking out local stores for backpacks for a while; Calumet Boston had a relatively small selection (I have not been there since they moved to new space) and all of the smaller botique stores (Ritz, mom & pops, etc) and big box stores (Worst Buy, Sprawl*Mart, etc) have pretty crappy selections as well, intended more for the folks who have one ultrazoom lens, or a bridge camera. So, I'm going to be reading this thread pretty thoroughly since I am also looking for backpack suggestions. :)
They won't give iPhone or iPad users an SD slot or the ability to replace the battery without completely dismantling the phone, but will give us a gas cartridge?
Why would you not welcome that? ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element
Phono preamps, effects pedals, and vocal processors (for that nice "warm" sounding second harmonic distortion), guitar amps, very high end power amps (I'll pass on tube amps take a nice clean Class D receiver/amp myself - I'm about to junk my old beloved Class A amp. If I want the "warm" sound on musical sources I'll use DSP, and from my keyboards, effects pedals or in-synth DSP), CRT televisions in monitors (in basements, garages, kids' rooms), any microwave oven (the magnetron is a vacuum tube at the heart of it), and so on.
The vacuum tube is far from dead. It is just becoming more expensive as use continues to become a niche product, but it will likely never be a dead tech.
Or effects pedals and phono preamps to give that nice warm second harmonic distortion that geezers reminisce over.
Or, that CRT television or monitor in your basement or your kid's room.
Or, the magnetron in your microwave oven; vacuum tubes are not going away any time soon.
Even so, if this "harmless form of HIV" does mutate back into the AIDS-causing variant and gives you the average 24 years to live after you've beat the cancer, you're cured of cancer but can't be intimate with your wife or husband or domesti^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H (fuck political correctness, let's just say SO) without infecting them. Is it really worth the cure?
It was $8.000 then but as efficiency improves and economies of scale work the price will come way down.
The more obvious question is: why not go somewhere that fast?
Have you ever been in a car at over 200mph? I have (I was the passenger not the driver) and it's an absolute blast; you're traveling a football field's length per second at that speed and it's amazing. I've driven a measly 185mph several times and even that is fantastic even out west where all you see is cornfields and sand and rocks, and mountains in the distance. It's a damned shame we don't have an autobahn-like road system. Our (rural) highways were designed for those speeds from the beginning but thanks to incompetence and political greed we need to lower driving requirements to the lowest common denominator (our driving tests consist of driving around a block), and also enhance revenue through unreasonable 55mph-70mph limits on most rural highways. The "unlimited by day" and/or "reasonable and prudent" speed "limits" in Montana and Arizona are history now. :-(
It's not just a matter of fun either, but convenience. Why should it take two or three days to drive cross country, when if traveling at high speed on limited-access highways one could conceivably travel from the East Coast to West Coast in just over 10 hours - about the same time that the inconvenience of air flight takes when you factor in check-in, the federally-mandated pornographic photo shoot or sexual molestation, retrieving your luggage, then getting your rental car, and so on.
Now when it comes to flying, if you could travel across the country at 13,000 mph, you could be on the opposite coast in 10 minutes (or from New York to London in 16 and a half minutes) - so you could conceivably check in (get there an hour or two early) and if all you bring is carry-on (because your business will be completed in time to catch the 10-minute flight home before dinner!) like a laptop, you won't even have to retrieve luggage. Be across the country two and a half hours after booking your flight, go to your meeting (or thanksgiving dinner, or whatever) then be home just a few hours later. Time is precious and is the one commodity you can never get back, so why waste more time than you have to?
It's also a fairly trivial exercise to make those hidden BSD subsystem and "dot" files to display in finder. There is nothing wrong with simplifying a GUI, as long as the means exists to enable power users and/or system admins to get access to re-enable the more "dangerous" features and access everything. Some desktop environments fail at this, including on Linux. (Gnome, I am glaring at you here!)
Oh the solution to your crazy capitalist idea is obvious: the monopolies will simply buy the licenses for various regions, thereby preserving the caps and not improving their networks, all the while boasting of more and more services with higher prices, but in actuality continue to deliver less and less.
The problem was the choice was between two politicians, not statesmen (public servants). Ron Paul would have been a better choice but unfortunately few are willing to chance a vote on a third option so we feed back into the system.
This whole thing is our own fault. Why? Because decades ago we stopped electing statesmen who understand that the marking of a good leader is a servant mentality, and instead we vote elitist career politicians into office.
Until we start voting sensibly and kick out every last bought-and-paid-for politician, we will continue to have no one to blame but ourselves.
I got last year's model sub at 69.7% off off, or $350.00
I'm still debating options but the other speakers won't be $100. I'm going reference series - this year's model, so it's going to be a minimum of $250 each (so 6*250), and more like $350 or $450 (the hold up on my decision is finding someone who has the RF-42 II, RF-52 II, RF-62 II and equivalent RC and RS models in stock so I can do an A/B/C/X comparison)e. Mid-range in the market place.
All the same, there are options which are vastly cheaper and still sound pretty decent, so I still say you are not looking hard enough. I was at Best Buy to check out Mangolia today (of course as I suspected they don't carry the top Elite receiver, nor the higher end Klipsch lines, just energy. Even lower end than Synergy - in their Mangolia section. WTF? They've taken the Mangolia name and trashed it) and there were plenty of cheap 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 options. There are a lot of cheap options that sound good for the money especially if you're willing to forgo features.
Seriously? That wasn't the case when I bought my current Elite receiver (I like receivers - slightly less rat's nest, and fewer components to fit in limited space). The DSP board in my VSX-26TX finally gave up the ghost so I sent it out for repair, and will be retiring it in favor of the SC-37 in the near future. I've gotten prices between $1200 and $1800 and note that there are far more expensive receivers as well as much, much cheaper receivers (starting around $100.00?!?!). There is not this big huge gap between crap, okay, and really good receivers. Maybe there is for preamps and amplifiers, but I won't go with a fully separate system until I can afford to build my dream house.
Also I am looking at Klipsch speakers - they have a full range of offerings between $100 each (Synergy series I think?) and $20,000 each (Palladium series). I bought some Reference speakers already and will be buying at least five more after I decide which vendor I'm buying the Elite from. I was very skeptical of class D amps rather than Class A but after hearing it, I'd have to say that if it's a step backward, it's not even noticeable, and it will save a heck of a lot on the electric bill (and on HVAC load)
At any rate, there is no 10x gap. Sure the receiver I am looking at does cost 10x the entry level stuff, but there is at least 12 other offerings at every imaginable price step between the entry level POS and the SC-37 in the Pioneer line alone. When you include other brands in the comparison (Denon, Onkyo, Yamaha, and so on) the selection is immense and covers the full price spectrum.
Also I'll probably never spend more than $1800-$2500 on a receiver; after all, it doesn't earn me money, and by even $2,000 you have arrived at a point of diminishing returns. I also can't see choosing Palladium series speakers over the Reference series, except bragging rights. Maybe if my day job were sound engineering I could see it, but otherwise, no.
Funny thing though; ever talk to anyone who drones on endlessly about hi fi gear? Try this sometime: pick a tone generator app for your iPhone or Android - even a dog whistle app will do, and put it on continuous, max volume, and start around 20kHz and work your way down. Chances are, you'll get down to 4.5kHz or 5.5kHz before the self-proclaimed audiophile can even hear it, then you inform them that it's been on all along and they can hear only to 4500hz, and it makes no sense for them to spend thousands on tweeters (It's funny to see their reaction, especially if you've already told them you're not interested in hearing about their $12,000 speakers!). I've taken care of my hearing and can hear to 17.5kHz, and yet I won't go overboard on a system. I just want to hear DSotM and Meddle at their finest, and have a decent home theater, and an entire system totalling under $5K will do that just as well as a system retailing for $100K in an average living room, as far as I am concerned.
If you can't find gear at a price point between $100 and $1,000, or between $1,000 and $10,000, I'm afraid you haven't bothered to shop for audio/AV gear in a very long time. The selection isn't lacking.
All IPV6 needs for mass adoption is for a few pornographers to publish new content exxxclusively on IPV6.
What good is an enterprise system if SOHO customers can't reach their IPV6-hosted web sites?
I did too! It's not hard to spot fake reviews!! I'll be sure to spot more in the future!
It's easy - fake reviews are overly-enthusiastic, and some of them go as far as to slam other brands. Real positive reviews are usually more sedate, little over-use of exclamation points!! and usually point out shortcomings of a product. Also, companies who astroturf usually submit multiple reviews, and it's usually posted in the same wording and typing style, which makes the fake reviews stick out even more. That's why when shopping for high ticket items I tend to read the negative reviews as well, and pay particular attention to longer reviews since fewer astroturfers invest the time in complete reviews.