I don't work for them or anything, my buddy just ordered one of their CoreCrib Macs, it's supposed to ship tomorrow, he said.
Basically, they're a genuine Apple motherboard stuck in a custom case with a custom power supply, and sold at a really low price. Just buy yourself a G4 CPU, a few sticks of RAM, an IDE drive, and you're in business, with an OS X capable machine for far less than Apple's insanely priced PowerMacs.
I'm really anxious to see him get that machine, if it all works out for him, I'll be ordering one for myself next!
Yeah, I got pissed off at the unwashed masses that frequent my local cinemas that I finally broke down and bought a 53" widescreen HDTV and a surround sound system. Now I only go to the theatre for BIG movies, like Lord of the Rings or the next Matrix movies. Anything else I watch at home, courtesy of Netflix. I even got a Whirley Pop popcorn maker to make great popcorn on my stove.
Sure, it's expensive, I've invested about $2500, but at $20/visit to the local cinema, by the time you count food and two tickets for my wife and I, it only takes 125 movies to break even!:)
Okay, so it doesn't really save you any money, but it is a lot less aggravating than dealing with the idiots in movie theatres. I wish they'd bring back actual ushers, or have "Theatre Marshals" to get people to behave. I had my screening of K19 ruined by a narcoleptic jackass snoring about 5 rows behind me, but at least we got the manager to come wake him up.
Which brings up an interesting question, what are the normal theatre rules about refunds? When should you ask for one, and has anyone ever gotten one?
No, they only appear to come from Yahoo.com, learn to read mail headers, or run them through SpamCop's reporting tool sometime, and you can see where the mail really came from. It's not Yahoo's fault that spammers like to pretend to be sending mail from their servers.
The Dell ones are great, I just got my dream screen yesterday, the 20" Dell 2000FP, it's sweet. 1600x1200 native resolution, and it puts my old 21" Trinitron CRT to shame for clarity. I've got 3 screens hooked up to my PC now, the big 2000FP in the middle, and two Dell 1504 15" LCDs on the sides.
They aren't flashy, but they're reasonably priced, and fairly rugged, you can't go wrong with the Dell screens.
I accept that argument, I just switched from Cable to Dish Networks on Friday. I got tired of the horrible analog signal on my "digital" cable. I'd have gone to DirecTV, but they don't have local channels in my area, and we're in an NRTC zone, meaning that you're locked into buying your DirecTV from your local licensed retailer, and can't get them off the 'net from places like American Satellite.
So yes, the satellite networks are competing with Cable.
I think the difference anymore is inkjet vs. laser. At the university where I work, most of the faculty I support have individual laser printers, HP LaserJet 6L, 1100, 1200, and 1000 models. These things are great, other than the annoying problem with the 6L and 1100 models where the separator pad wears out, and the printer starts grabbing all the paper in the tray at once, though that can be fixed fairly cheaply.
Now, it'd be much more efficient to have one large printer per department or building floor, but from their reaction, you'd think you were asking the faculty to trek across the Sahara to retrieve their print jobs.
In the past, they used a variety of HP, Lexmark, and Epson inkjets, which would have to be replaced every 3-4 years or so, and suffered constant breakdowns. By comparison, the lasers have gone on 5-6 years already, with no problems, and it's getting to the point where I'm replacing computers, and leaving the faculty with the same laser printer, because they just work, and there's no reason to replace them. I've got about 150 of these things that I provide support for, so I feel I've got a large enough sample size to make some pretty good generalizations.
Of course, that doesn't help you much if you absolutely MUST have color, but spending the extra on a laser printer up front will save you a bundle later on those expensive ink cartridges. Though I've heard good things about the generic cartridges you can get from MegaToners, though I've not used them yet.
Here at home, I've got an Epson Stylus 785EPX and an HP LaserJet 1200. I almost never use the Epson, the thing always needs to have its heads cleaned, and how often do you really need color? For printing digital photos, I just send them to Ofoto.com, I've found that after paying for ink and photo paper, it is almost the same cost to just have your photos printed by one of the "professional" places, and it's a lot less hassle.
Actually, I think Microsoft now posts patches on Wednesday, at least the ones to WindowsUpdate, as Thursdays are usually the days all my clients set to auto-update themselves actually do so.
Ugh, I work in Academia too, and you're getting screwed. Our campus won't even hire a full-time IT person of any type for under $33K or so. Now if you're a part timer, or a temp, then you may get less, of course...
Yeah, but once it gets going, look out! I was grabbing Red Hat 9 and Mandrake 9.1 at the same time, when I got a call from our campus net admin because I was eating up over 15Mbps of bandwidth.
It started out slowly, and I just let it run, not noticing how much it was eating up.:)
An ejectable cabin wouldn't help you either, as without shielding, it'd burn up in atmo faster than the damaged Columbia orbiter did. You have to dissipate all that speed/heat on the way down either way.
Yes, but on the bright side, Macs are only 5% of computers sold, so your potential number of people to support is much lower.
I now tell everyone I meet (especially wife's friends & family) that I'm only a "Mac Guy" and I don't know anything about Windows.
Of course, I don't actually own a Mac, and my day job is a Windows server & desktop support person, but they don't need to know that.
I've found this strategy to be pretty effective, and of course, you could say you only know Linux too, but that uses PC hardware, so you still might get asked to fix that.
Fortunately, most of the general public thinks that Macs and PCs are completely different creatures, so there's no way my "Mac" knowledge could help them with their PC problems.:)
Call me ignorant, but what exactly is SDF, and what is the situation with them? I'm sure I missed a story somewhere, but come on, can someone spell it out for me?
Sales tax is one of the reasons I tell people not to buy educational discounted machines from Apple. Sure, you get a $50 discount off the price of the machine, but you pay $75 in Sales Tax on it, so it's cheaper to pay full price on the machine, and get it from MacWarehouse or somewhere else that doesn't charge tax.
Hmm, I wonder if thinkgeek.com will start charging tax now.:)
Re:I'm more amazed....
on
Baked Apple
·
· Score: 1
I'm going to guess that they spilled some liquid on it, and thought (incorrectly) it would be a good idea to dry it out in the oven.
That's the only pseudo-logical reason I can think of for toasting a $2500 machine.
Yeah, that's exactly why I didn't get into it. I tried the Beta (which was free) and decided that while it was kind of fun, it certainly wasn't worth the cost.
$50 + $10/month = $170 for one year of playtime
Umm, hmm, for what amounts to instant messaging? No thanks.
It is kind of fun, for a while, especially if you meet some friends you enjoy chatting with, but the initial price of the game was too high.
I had a temp job at Software, Etc. this year for the Holidays (just some extra money for X-mas, I have a full-time PC Support job) and The Sims is still a big seller. But what Maxis hasn't realized is that a lot of the people who bought it are not typical gamers, they're the casualest of the casual gamers, and a lot of them are teenage girls, and the rest are white trash.:)
The teenagers' parents are not at all keen on buying them something with a monthly fee attached, and the trashy people can't even get credit cards. The Sims does not attract those of us who can or would spend $10 a month to play the game, by and large.
Maxis should be selling it for $19.99 and $4.99/month, and they'd wind up making more money and have a much bigger hit on their hands. Sell the first version dirt cheap, then come out with expansion packs at $30/pop every 4 months, and you'll really rake in the cash.
It takes AT LEAST three weeks to do the final preps of a shuttle for launch, they don't just wheel the thing out of the hanger and prop it up on the launch pad. NASA would be hard pressed to launch a shuttle with two months' notice, much less 2-3 weeks.
Yeah, you really can't change tiles in space. First of all, you need the custom tiles, and affixing them is NOT easy. Check out this article from 1980, about the building of the Columbia:
Also, there are no foot/handholds anywhere on that part of the Shuttle, and Newton's laws apply up there. That's the problem they had on the first Spacewalks of the Gemini program, no one realized that without footholds or handholds, you can't even turn a screwdriver, because the screwdriver is also turning you. (No Soviet Russia jokes!)
In short, if the falling insulation is what caused Columbia to break up, they were doomed the day they launched. There wasn't nearly enough delta-V to get them into a higher orbit to rendezvous with ISS, and no way that Atlantis could be rushed in time to reach them before they ran out of Oxygen. I don't know how long the shuttle's batteries/fuel cells can keep it heated, but I'm guessing that really the only way anyone could have survived would be if they drew straws and 5 of the 7 went out the airlock. That's assuming there's enough power to keep it at least 40 degrees F in there until Atlantis could be scrambled.
Otherwise, maybe the Soyuz escape pod at ISS could be routed to them, or the Russian Progress capsule with O2 and supplies sent to ISS the next day could have been routed to them, but I highly doubt both of those were possible.
Columbia was most likely lost at launch, and there's nothing NASA could have done, even if they knew within 30 minutes that the damage would prove fatal.
I stand corrected, guess I missed that in the stream of techno-babble, I interpreted it as them saying that he was dying because he hadn't been given the super-aging drug they anticipated using on him later, but I'll have to wait until the DVD comes out before I delve further into this Simpsons' Comic Book Store Guy level conversation.:)
And, I like Patrick Stuart and Brent Spiner as much as the next (hetero) guy, but howabout a movie with Worf as the main character, or Dr. Crusher? They don't all need to be the Captain Picard & Data show.
I saw all three of those movies, but it was suicide to release Nemesis that close to LOTR:TTT, the hard core fans will go see Nemesis, but the mildly-geeky will go see LOTR, and forget all about Nemesis.
Timing, Timing, Timing.
I did enjoy Nemesis, though I have a few nitpicks, mild SPOILER WARNING.
-Assuming Picard's clone-guy is at least 25 or so, that means they had to start cloning Picard back when he was just some random captain of a random ship (Stargazer?) Why'd they pick him?
-Not even one throw-away line about Lore? What happened to him? You have a whole plot about another model of Data, and you don't mention Lore? What the hell? Even a line like "Lore's body was destroyed when the Enterprise D crashed." would have been appreciated.
-Having Wil seen in the movie, but not talked to was rather distracting, they should have left his scene in.
All in all, I enjoyed it, and I'll get the DVD when it comes out. It wasn't crap on the grand scale of Star Trek V by any means, but releasing a "decent" Trek when Paramount did was nuts. They should have put it out a month sooner or in January, when there was a distinct lack of geek-friendly movies.
And that shows you just how risky space flight is, there's a 2% chance that the trip you're about to take will result in your death.
I bet you wouldn't drive your car much if those were the odds, and if you only had a 98% chance of surviving an airplane trip, you wouldn't see nearly as many business trips.
Assuming you'd die every 1 in 50 trips with your car, if you were lucky, you might make it safely through your daily commute for 2-3 months before the odds caught up with you.
I'm wondering if life insurance companies would even write a policy on an Astronaut. I'm betting the answer is no.
Astronauts work their asses off for most of their lives to get one of the hardest and most competitive jobs ever in human history. How many people have gone in to space? 100? That's a pretty elite club, demanding not only technical skills, intelligence, but a tremendous amount of patience and discipline over the course of several years.
In short, they are heroes, they risk their lives on a glorious adventure, and do real science that benefits all of mankind.
The fact that many people would be willing to go to space doesn't diminish the courage of those who do, there's a hell of a lot more to it than just hopping into the rocket, this is something these people have worked towards for decades.
My dad works at the waste treatment plant in Las Vegas, and he's told me many times that the water that comes out of the plant is acutally clean enough that it could be used for consumption, but they dump it back into Lake Mead, dirty it up with the lake's normal filth, then pull it back out, process it, and send it to your faucet.
He told me the only reason they don't just pipe it directly from the plant back into the drinking water system is that people would cringe at the thought of drinking it, even though it's much cleaner than what they're pulling out of the lake now.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out these systems:
CoreCrib and CoreBox
I don't work for them or anything, my buddy just ordered one of their CoreCrib Macs, it's supposed to ship tomorrow, he said.
Basically, they're a genuine Apple motherboard stuck in a custom case with a custom power supply, and sold at a really low price. Just buy yourself a G4 CPU, a few sticks of RAM, an IDE drive, and you're in business, with an OS X capable machine for far less than Apple's insanely priced PowerMacs.
I'm really anxious to see him get that machine, if it all works out for him, I'll be ordering one for myself next!
Yeah, I got pissed off at the unwashed masses that frequent my local cinemas that I finally broke down and bought a 53" widescreen HDTV and a surround sound system. Now I only go to the theatre for BIG movies, like Lord of the Rings or the next Matrix movies. Anything else I watch at home, courtesy of Netflix. I even got a Whirley Pop popcorn maker to make great popcorn on my stove.
:)
Sure, it's expensive, I've invested about $2500, but at $20/visit to the local cinema, by the time you count food and two tickets for my wife and I, it only takes 125 movies to break even!
Okay, so it doesn't really save you any money, but it is a lot less aggravating than dealing with the idiots in movie theatres. I wish they'd bring back actual ushers, or have "Theatre Marshals" to get people to behave. I had my screening of K19 ruined by a narcoleptic jackass snoring about 5 rows behind me, but at least we got the manager to come wake him up.
Which brings up an interesting question, what are the normal theatre rules about refunds? When should you ask for one, and has anyone ever gotten one?
No, they only appear to come from Yahoo.com, learn to read mail headers, or run them through SpamCop's reporting tool sometime, and you can see where the mail really came from. It's not Yahoo's fault that spammers like to pretend to be sending mail from their servers.
I've got it, it works well, just wish they had more area codes, as it's kind of odd having a Washington D.C. area code, when I live in Iowa. :)
The Dell ones are great, I just got my dream screen yesterday, the 20" Dell 2000FP, it's sweet. 1600x1200 native resolution, and it puts my old 21" Trinitron CRT to shame for clarity. I've got 3 screens hooked up to my PC now, the big 2000FP in the middle, and two Dell 1504 15" LCDs on the sides.
They aren't flashy, but they're reasonably priced, and fairly rugged, you can't go wrong with the Dell screens.
I accept that argument, I just switched from Cable to Dish Networks on Friday. I got tired of the horrible analog signal on my "digital" cable. I'd have gone to DirecTV, but they don't have local channels in my area, and we're in an NRTC zone, meaning that you're locked into buying your DirecTV from your local licensed retailer, and can't get them off the 'net from places like American Satellite.
So yes, the satellite networks are competing with Cable.
Now, it'd be much more efficient to have one large printer per department or building floor, but from their reaction, you'd think you were asking the faculty to trek across the Sahara to retrieve their print jobs.
In the past, they used a variety of HP, Lexmark, and Epson inkjets, which would have to be replaced every 3-4 years or so, and suffered constant breakdowns. By comparison, the lasers have gone on 5-6 years already, with no problems, and it's getting to the point where I'm replacing computers, and leaving the faculty with the same laser printer, because they just work, and there's no reason to replace them. I've got about 150 of these things that I provide support for, so I feel I've got a large enough sample size to make some pretty good generalizations.
Of course, that doesn't help you much if you absolutely MUST have color, but spending the extra on a laser printer up front will save you a bundle later on those expensive ink cartridges. Though I've heard good things about the generic cartridges you can get from MegaToners, though I've not used them yet.
Here at home, I've got an Epson Stylus 785EPX and an HP LaserJet 1200. I almost never use the Epson, the thing always needs to have its heads cleaned, and how often do you really need color? For printing digital photos, I just send them to Ofoto.com, I've found that after paying for ink and photo paper, it is almost the same cost to just have your photos printed by one of the "professional" places, and it's a lot less hassle.
I'm always referred to as "Computer Guy" at the university where I work. A new professor shows up, and his department head says:
:)
"This is Seth, he's our computer guy."
I don't think anywone knows what my actual title is, other than me, even though it's on my door, and my business card.
Actually, I think Microsoft now posts patches on Wednesday, at least the ones to WindowsUpdate, as Thursdays are usually the days all my clients set to auto-update themselves actually do so.
Ugh, I work in Academia too, and you're getting screwed. Our campus won't even hire a full-time IT person of any type for under $33K or so. Now if you're a part timer, or a temp, then you may get less, of course...
Yeah, but once it gets going, look out! I was grabbing Red Hat 9 and Mandrake 9.1 at the same time, when I got a call from our campus net admin because I was eating up over 15Mbps of bandwidth.
:)
It started out slowly, and I just let it run, not noticing how much it was eating up.
An ejectable cabin wouldn't help you either, as without shielding, it'd burn up in atmo faster than the damaged Columbia orbiter did. You have to dissipate all that speed/heat on the way down either way.
Yes, but on the bright side, Macs are only 5% of computers sold, so your potential number of people to support is much lower.
:)
I now tell everyone I meet (especially wife's friends & family) that I'm only a "Mac Guy" and I don't know anything about Windows.
Of course, I don't actually own a Mac, and my day job is a Windows server & desktop support person, but they don't need to know that.
I've found this strategy to be pretty effective, and of course, you could say you only know Linux too, but that uses PC hardware, so you still might get asked to fix that.
Fortunately, most of the general public thinks that Macs and PCs are completely different creatures, so there's no way my "Mac" knowledge could help them with their PC problems.
I really don't understand the "Loss of Jobs" argument. There's no clause somewhere in the Constitution that reads:
"Because you've made money selling a widget/service in the past, you are guaranteed the unconditional right to continue doing so."
Yet, somehow, many Americans think that continued profitability is a sacrosanct right somehow owed to them by the government.
Call me ignorant, but what exactly is SDF, and what is the situation with them? I'm sure I missed a story somewhere, but come on, can someone spell it out for me?
Sales tax is one of the reasons I tell people not to buy educational discounted machines from Apple. Sure, you get a $50 discount off the price of the machine, but you pay $75 in Sales Tax on it, so it's cheaper to pay full price on the machine, and get it from MacWarehouse or somewhere else that doesn't charge tax.
:)
Hmm, I wonder if thinkgeek.com will start charging tax now.
I'm going to guess that they spilled some liquid on it, and thought (incorrectly) it would be a good idea to dry it out in the oven.
That's the only pseudo-logical reason I can think of for toasting a $2500 machine.
Yeah, that's exactly why I didn't get into it. I tried the Beta (which was free) and decided that while it was kind of fun, it certainly wasn't worth the cost.
:)
$50 + $10/month = $170 for one year of playtime
Umm, hmm, for what amounts to instant messaging? No thanks.
It is kind of fun, for a while, especially if you meet some friends you enjoy chatting with, but the initial price of the game was too high.
I had a temp job at Software, Etc. this year for the Holidays (just some extra money for X-mas, I have a full-time PC Support job) and The Sims is still a big seller. But what Maxis hasn't realized is that a lot of the people who bought it are not typical gamers, they're the casualest of the casual gamers, and a lot of them are teenage girls, and the rest are white trash.
The teenagers' parents are not at all keen on buying them something with a monthly fee attached, and the trashy people can't even get credit cards. The Sims does not attract those of us who can or would spend $10 a month to play the game, by and large.
Maxis should be selling it for $19.99 and $4.99/month, and they'd wind up making more money and have a much bigger hit on their hands. Sell the first version dirt cheap, then come out with expansion packs at $30/pop every 4 months, and you'll really rake in the cash.
It takes AT LEAST three weeks to do the final preps of a shuttle for launch, they don't just wheel the thing out of the hanger and prop it up on the launch pad. NASA would be hard pressed to launch a shuttle with two months' notice, much less 2-3 weeks.
Yeah, you really can't change tiles in space. First of all, you need the custom tiles, and affixing them is NOT easy. Check out this article from 1980, about the building of the Columbia:
0 4.easterbrook.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/80
Also, there are no foot/handholds anywhere on that part of the Shuttle, and Newton's laws apply up there. That's the problem they had on the first Spacewalks of the Gemini program, no one realized that without footholds or handholds, you can't even turn a screwdriver, because the screwdriver is also turning you. (No Soviet Russia jokes!)
In short, if the falling insulation is what caused Columbia to break up, they were doomed the day they launched. There wasn't nearly enough delta-V to get them into a higher orbit to rendezvous with ISS, and no way that Atlantis could be rushed in time to reach them before they ran out of Oxygen. I don't know how long the shuttle's batteries/fuel cells can keep it heated, but I'm guessing that really the only way anyone could have survived would be if they drew straws and 5 of the 7 went out the airlock. That's assuming there's enough power to keep it at least 40 degrees F in there until Atlantis could be scrambled.
Otherwise, maybe the Soyuz escape pod at ISS could be routed to them, or the Russian Progress capsule with O2 and supplies sent to ISS the next day could have been routed to them, but I highly doubt both of those were possible.
Columbia was most likely lost at launch, and there's nothing NASA could have done, even if they knew within 30 minutes that the damage would prove fatal.
I stand corrected, guess I missed that in the stream of techno-babble, I interpreted it as them saying that he was dying because he hadn't been given the super-aging drug they anticipated using on him later, but I'll have to wait until the DVD comes out before I delve further into this Simpsons' Comic Book Store Guy level conversation. :)
And, I like Patrick Stuart and Brent Spiner as much as the next (hetero) guy, but howabout a movie with Worf as the main character, or Dr. Crusher? They don't all need to be the Captain Picard & Data show.
Amen, Brother.
I saw all three of those movies, but it was suicide to release Nemesis that close to LOTR:TTT, the hard core fans will go see Nemesis, but the mildly-geeky will go see LOTR, and forget all about Nemesis.
Timing, Timing, Timing.
I did enjoy Nemesis, though I have a few nitpicks, mild SPOILER WARNING.
-Assuming Picard's clone-guy is at least 25 or so, that means they had to start cloning Picard back when he was just some random captain of a random ship (Stargazer?) Why'd they pick him?
-Not even one throw-away line about Lore? What happened to him? You have a whole plot about another model of Data, and you don't mention Lore? What the hell? Even a line like "Lore's body was destroyed when the Enterprise D crashed." would have been appreciated.
-Having Wil seen in the movie, but not talked to was rather distracting, they should have left his scene in.
All in all, I enjoyed it, and I'll get the DVD when it comes out. It wasn't crap on the grand scale of Star Trek V by any means, but releasing a "decent" Trek when Paramount did was nuts. They should have put it out a month sooner or in January, when there was a distinct lack of geek-friendly movies.
And that shows you just how risky space flight is, there's a 2% chance that the trip you're about to take will result in your death.
I bet you wouldn't drive your car much if those were the odds, and if you only had a 98% chance of surviving an airplane trip, you wouldn't see nearly as many business trips.
Assuming you'd die every 1 in 50 trips with your car, if you were lucky, you might make it safely through your daily commute for 2-3 months before the odds caught up with you.
I'm wondering if life insurance companies would even write a policy on an Astronaut. I'm betting the answer is no.
Astronauts work their asses off for most of their lives to get one of the hardest and most competitive jobs ever in human history. How many people have gone in to space? 100? That's a pretty elite club, demanding not only technical skills, intelligence, but a tremendous amount of patience and discipline over the course of several years.
In short, they are heroes, they risk their lives on a glorious adventure, and do real science that benefits all of mankind.
The fact that many people would be willing to go to space doesn't diminish the courage of those who do, there's a hell of a lot more to it than just hopping into the rocket, this is something these people have worked towards for decades.
My dad works at the waste treatment plant in Las Vegas, and he's told me many times that the water that comes out of the plant is acutally clean enough that it could be used for consumption, but they dump it back into Lake Mead, dirty it up with the lake's normal filth, then pull it back out, process it, and send it to your faucet.
He told me the only reason they don't just pipe it directly from the plant back into the drinking water system is that people would cringe at the thought of drinking it, even though it's much cleaner than what they're pulling out of the lake now.
I thought a Parsec was a unit for measuring distance, not speed. That line has always bugged me. :)