The ISPs are claiming that the consumers will foot the bill if the likes of Netflix and Google aren't made to pay. But, who believes that if the big content providers are charged more, they won't immediately pass that increase on to their content consuming customers? Consumers pay for their data consumption one way or the other.
From the dates that the blood samples were taken, 1988-1994, I would say that most people at that time had elevated lead levels from breathing all the leaded gas fumes for years previous. The mandate for catalytic converters went through in 1975 but, as I remember, it was into the 80's before all the leaded gas had stopped being available. I would bet that if that sampling were done now the levels would be much lower for most of the people sampled; at least the younger ones who were born after the switch to unleaded gas.
There's good news and bad news, as always. The good news is that with the price dropping on technology, you can find fantastic scopes that are quite inexpensive and will find just about anything you'd want to look at with the touch of a couple of buttons. Most will even interface with a laptop right out of the box. The bad news is, if astrophotography is what you're after, your budget is going to have to expand a bit or your going to have to find a good deal on a used setup. The problem with taking pictures is tracking, tracking, tracking. You need a scope mount that's able to track with very little vibration or drift and you also need one that can handle having the weight of a heavy camera body clamped onto it. CCDs have come down quite a bit in price and they are much lighter in weight but, again, they ain't cheap.
A good place to get an idea of pricing would be Orion Telescopes http://www.telescope.com/. They sell just about everything and have a "wizard" that you can use to get you in the ball park on prices. If you weren't so interested in photography, I'd suggest one of the Dobsonian style setups; they are inexpensive, portable, easy to set-up and take down and give excellent view/price.
OK, what about athletes that are always having knee problems and injuries? What about rock climbers- more risk of injury there than a guy that sits on his couch. How about the real biggie, drinking; they going to test everyone's blood every month at a random time to see who's hitting the bottle. I'm overweight and 42 and have never been in the hospital for anything. Hell, I've never made a claim for health insurance even though I've been covered since I started working at 17. I know a lot of guys that are runners, weekend basketball players and such that have had knee surgeries and are always going to the doctor for something... who is really the biggest user of health coverage?
I count myself a "geek". I've tried so many flavors of linux that I have stacks of CDs/DVDs with every version and variety that you can shake a hot pocket wrapper at, for both Mac and PC systems and I have NEVER, not once, had any of them install without having to edit some arcane config file that would make Harry Potter give up wizardry. That's on two different home systems and two different laptops. And, once I finally got the system up and running... never has all of my hardware worked. I have never been able to get my trusty logitech web cam to work, and forget about my bluetooth keyboard. How about the way the mouse works just great during the installation but then, has no mouse wheel action and tracks like a supercharged nitro machine even on the lowest settings once you actually boot up in the OS?
Do you understand that Mac has made the easiest installation of software that you could think of - drag an icon ANYWHERE to your computer and it works - and people screw it up! If that's too daunting for many of the people out there, just who is going to go out and snuggle up to Linux?? I don't think I've every tried anything in linux that didn't turn into a project just to figure out how to do the original thing!
Linux is for the guy that likes to mess with his computer... not "do things with his computer" but, "mess with his computer". If you have to spend 5 hours scouring the net and editing config files just to get that new digital camera to show up so you can pull little Sally's birthday picts off it, your not going to be happy. I know... I've been there and done that; ended up booting into Windows and pulling the things off in less than a minute.
Now's the perfect time to go after WiFi since they've gotten everyone scared to death about "global warming" and how it's going to kill everyone in ten years. No matter that they're finding evidence of silver mines and grain fields under receding glaciers, showing that at one time it was much warmer and humans made it through somehow. Why should WiFi be any different? What's the famous saying; tell a lie long enough and loud enough and the people will believe it.
Well, this capitalist has a little something to say. My expirience is that if I pay for something, someone has some responsibility for whatever it is I bought.
Can I download some linux distro for free? Sure but, do I have someone I know I can hold accountable if I have problems with it? No Way! Oh there's forums galore and books but, nothing that says "if you need help, call here:". When I purchase software, which I do often for my job, I have somewhere I can bitch when I have a problem (which always happens). I may have to wait on the phone for an hour or wait for tech to call me back but, either they help me or they don't get my business anymore. Where's the incentive for a free distro to help someone who has problems? There is none. Check most open source program sites and see how much support they have if any. A FAQ is about all you can expect.
Here's the break down on support for the different OSs that I use every day: Windows (03/XP) - pretty reliable support and fast solutions to problems with the OS and software from vendors; MacOS-X - OK support... in every species of OS-X they change something and what ever you did to make something work last time won't work the next, third party hardware problems? Good luck Sailor! ; Solaris/Unix - Pretty good support for the OS but, poor support for software from vendors especially when using a client for something that's Windows server based; Linux - For gedda bout it!! I don't have time to search the net for the arcane rituals that are used in this techno church of an OS in order to get my mouse wheel to work right.
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The ISPs are claiming that the consumers will foot the bill if the likes of Netflix and Google aren't made to pay. But, who believes that if the big content providers are charged more, they won't immediately pass that increase on to their content consuming customers? Consumers pay for their data consumption one way or the other.
From the dates that the blood samples were taken, 1988-1994, I would say that most people at that time had elevated lead levels from breathing all the leaded gas fumes for years previous. The mandate for catalytic converters went through in 1975 but, as I remember, it was into the 80's before all the leaded gas had stopped being available. I would bet that if that sampling were done now the levels would be much lower for most of the people sampled; at least the younger ones who were born after the switch to unleaded gas.
There's good news and bad news, as always. The good news is that with the price dropping on technology, you can find fantastic scopes that are quite inexpensive and will find just about anything you'd want to look at with the touch of a couple of buttons. Most will even interface with a laptop right out of the box. The bad news is, if astrophotography is what you're after, your budget is going to have to expand a bit or your going to have to find a good deal on a used setup. The problem with taking pictures is tracking, tracking, tracking. You need a scope mount that's able to track with very little vibration or drift and you also need one that can handle having the weight of a heavy camera body clamped onto it. CCDs have come down quite a bit in price and they are much lighter in weight but, again, they ain't cheap. A good place to get an idea of pricing would be Orion Telescopes http://www.telescope.com/. They sell just about everything and have a "wizard" that you can use to get you in the ball park on prices. If you weren't so interested in photography, I'd suggest one of the Dobsonian style setups; they are inexpensive, portable, easy to set-up and take down and give excellent view/price.
OK, what about athletes that are always having knee problems and injuries? What about rock climbers- more risk of injury there than a guy that sits on his couch. How about the real biggie, drinking; they going to test everyone's blood every month at a random time to see who's hitting the bottle. I'm overweight and 42 and have never been in the hospital for anything. Hell, I've never made a claim for health insurance even though I've been covered since I started working at 17. I know a lot of guys that are runners, weekend basketball players and such that have had knee surgeries and are always going to the doctor for something... who is really the biggest user of health coverage?
I count myself a "geek". I've tried so many flavors of linux that I have stacks of CDs/DVDs with every version and variety that you can shake a hot pocket wrapper at, for both Mac and PC systems and I have NEVER, not once, had any of them install without having to edit some arcane config file that would make Harry Potter give up wizardry. That's on two different home systems and two different laptops. And, once I finally got the system up and running... never has all of my hardware worked. I have never been able to get my trusty logitech web cam to work, and forget about my bluetooth keyboard. How about the way the mouse works just great during the installation but then, has no mouse wheel action and tracks like a supercharged nitro machine even on the lowest settings once you actually boot up in the OS?
Do you understand that Mac has made the easiest installation of software that you could think of - drag an icon ANYWHERE to your computer and it works - and people screw it up! If that's too daunting for many of the people out there, just who is going to go out and snuggle up to Linux?? I don't think I've every tried anything in linux that didn't turn into a project just to figure out how to do the original thing!
Linux is for the guy that likes to mess with his computer... not "do things with his computer" but, "mess with his computer". If you have to spend 5 hours scouring the net and editing config files just to get that new digital camera to show up so you can pull little Sally's birthday picts off it, your not going to be happy. I know... I've been there and done that; ended up booting into Windows and pulling the things off in less than a minute.
Now's the perfect time to go after WiFi since they've gotten everyone scared to death about "global warming" and how it's going to kill everyone in ten years. No matter that they're finding evidence of silver mines and grain fields under receding glaciers, showing that at one time it was much warmer and humans made it through somehow. Why should WiFi be any different? What's the famous saying; tell a lie long enough and loud enough and the people will believe it.
Well, this capitalist has a little something to say. My expirience is that if I pay for something, someone has some responsibility for whatever it is I bought. Can I download some linux distro for free? Sure but, do I have someone I know I can hold accountable if I have problems with it? No Way! Oh there's forums galore and books but, nothing that says "if you need help, call here:". When I purchase software, which I do often for my job, I have somewhere I can bitch when I have a problem (which always happens). I may have to wait on the phone for an hour or wait for tech to call me back but, either they help me or they don't get my business anymore. Where's the incentive for a free distro to help someone who has problems? There is none. Check most open source program sites and see how much support they have if any. A FAQ is about all you can expect. Here's the break down on support for the different OSs that I use every day: Windows (03/XP) - pretty reliable support and fast solutions to problems with the OS and software from vendors; MacOS-X - OK support... in every species of OS-X they change something and what ever you did to make something work last time won't work the next, third party hardware problems? Good luck Sailor! ; Solaris/Unix - Pretty good support for the OS but, poor support for software from vendors especially when using a client for something that's Windows server based; Linux - For gedda bout it!! I don't have time to search the net for the arcane rituals that are used in this techno church of an OS in order to get my mouse wheel to work right.