Search results

  1. J

    Nichia Develops 60 Lumen Per Watt White LED

    Those were my thoughts exactly when I first read about this. 3500K might be borderline tolerable, but 2700K, fuhgetaboutit! That's positively nausea-inducing, irrespective of whether I'm with a Cantonese cuttie or not. There was some talk on CPF about bluish-tinted light being good for setting...
  2. J

    World's Smallest Political Quiz

    90% on both which makes me pretty libertarian. Not sure on totally free trade or censorship. I'm all for free speech up to a point but I would like some limits on commercial speech (i.e. advertising), including a return to the ban on prescription drug ads. People are currently too uneducated to...
  3. J

    Neat Game

    15795. Considering I haven't looked at a map in ages, I'm surprised I did as well as I did.
  4. J

    Tax Refunds Explained...

    You also had a few things going in your favor. For one thing, you were young, and as far as I know had/have no major health issues. If need be, a young, fairly healthy person can live out of a box for a long time. It's not the best, healthiest thing long term, but many have done it and survived...
  5. J

    Tax Refunds Explained...

    Those places are cheap because the few jobs there are low-paying. Proportionately housing is just as expensive relative to the available jobs. You can't afford a $140K house on that $5 an hour job in the local greasy spoon, which is about all you're likely to get in a place like that. In FL the...
  6. J

    Tax Refunds Explained...

    You're right that a lot of uneducated, low-income people spend money they really don't have on stupid things, and otherwise have pretty warped priorities (i.e. big screen TV but no food in the house). But the fact remains that in certain parts of the country even the most basic housing runs...
  7. J

    Low cost / High performance build suggestions

    The compelling reasons to stick with AMD at this point are more motherboard features at a given price point, and ability to use higher-density RAM. Most of the AMD motherboards I see support up to 4GB per slot while the Intel support only 2GB. Down the road you may want to go with a 64-bit OS...
  8. J

    Tax Refunds Explained...

    You're missing the point again. Someone making $30K nowadays can't afford to live at today's prices even if they pay zero taxes. The taxes they do pay are not coming from disposable income. It's not like the money they send to the government each week simply means they have to give up buying a...
  9. J

    Tax Refunds Explained...

    Not really. I actually started writing a rant yesterday but decided I didn't even want to get into it. The post above was about as much ranting as I care to do on this subject. Gilbo probably already said a lot of the stuff I would have said. The system is broke because of both parties. The...
  10. J

    Tax Refunds Explained...

    Buffett does contribute an enormous amount to charity. He probably feels by keeping more of his money via tax shelters then more goes to the charities which do a better job helping whoever they are helping than the government would. I'd do the same in his position. I'd probably keep a few...
  11. J

    Where's everybody?

    Not bad at all. I tend to do anywhere from 2 to 4 miles a day just running errands (i.e. shopping, going to the bank). Two Saturdays ago I went to the Flushing Chinese New Year's parade. Too cheap to take the bus. Six miles round trip, plus about another two just walking around downtown...
  12. J

    Stuff White People Like

    Another funny site in the same spirit as the one Howell found: Stuff Asian People Like
  13. J

    Stuff White People Like

    I was laughing my ass off because it was all so true. Just go to any yuppie neighborhood in New York. You'll find people who are exactly like that. Some of my favorites were the parts about gifted children, bicycles, and Asian girls. Yeah, (yuppie) white people always have "gifted" children, and...
  14. J

    What I miss about the Intel P4...

    Fascinating stuff all these altered states of matter. It would be kind of cool to slow a light beam down to the point you could actually get out its way, sort of like in that Trek episode "Wink of an Eye". Speaking of Lucy Lui, she grew up in Jackson Heights, within walking distance of Astoria...
  15. J

    What I miss about the Intel P4...

    Clocker basically just said the same thing as me but in fewer words. That's exactly what they teach in engineering schools. Heat is the end product of practically every process.
  16. J

    What I miss about the Intel P4...

    Leave it to SF to get such a simple topic off on some many tangents. :diablo: Well, looks like I'm getting pulled into the discussion again. Let's start with that electric motor example. You all know I'm going to turn this into something with trains, so let's say the motor in question is maybe...
  17. J

    Something Random

    I saw an infomercial for one of those colon-cleansing products. Just for kicks I decided to google for more info. Anyway, I came across this. Funny as hell. Note: This link definitely not safe for work, especially the pictures he links to! Don't bother looking if you just ate, either. As for...
  18. J

    What I miss about the Intel P4...

    Maybe some of the light from the power or HDD indicator will leave the room, or some of turbulence from the case fans will affect air outside an open window, but it's nothing that could be easily measured unless you're at 6 decimal places. Essentially, power in=room heating, and that applies to...
  19. J

    Zoos

    I have mixed feelings on this. The zoos which give animals plenty of roaming space, and are close to their natural habitat, are probably not a bad thing for the reasons you mentioned. The animals will likely live similarly to how they might in the wild, but free of their natural predators. On...
  20. J

    The 3,5 GB RAM limit of Windows

    Going by my brother's new system, the motherboard certainly "sees" all of the 4GB prior to booting (It says 4194304K available RAM-actually a little less than that due to some holes between 640K and 1024K). However, in XP there is anywhere between 2.75 and 2.93 GB available to the OS, depending...
  21. J

    Infinite Monkey Thorem in Doubt

    Hmm, just look at what one monkey can do... ;-)
  22. J

    I'm mystified about geeks

    Probably spend hours in the library. Now what did we do before libraries? I'll guess that the alchemists/wizards of old would probably have been nerds had they been born 500 years later. At least on the bright side being a geek ( or nerd) these days doesn't have the same social stigma as being...
  23. J

    Dell Dimension 2400 (not mine) stuck in UDMA-2

    Actually, the drives were already in cable select. I've been using cable select exclusively for a few years now. Anyway, the guy just emailed me that a new cable he received from a friend's spare parts bin solved the problem. Turns out it was his 7-year old ratty cable all along. And here I...
  24. J

    Politics 2008

    Romney dropped out today so it looks like McCain will be the Republican nominee. McCain/Clinton or McCain/Obama this November. My guess is if Obama runs he wins. If Hillary runs McCain wins.
  25. J

    Politics 2008

    From what I understand they'll pay for all or part of it if they determine that you can't afford it. That's they really scary part-they'll look at your income and assets, and decide, not you. For someone like me with <$10,000 income but a decent amount of assets, they would likely tell me to pay...
  26. J

    Politics 2008

    I just read this about Hitlary. Disgusting. This is just what the already squeezed middle class needs now-another tax to pay for universal health care. The minute the government sends me a letter saying I have to be insured I'm looking for someplace else to live. Mandatory SS and Medicare is bad...
  27. J

    Politics 2008

    Of course that's the only way I'd support it as well. I've learned that you never, ever give politicians a new source of revenue unless you kill an old source first. Once they have it, they're reluctant to let it go.
  28. J

    Low fps in 3D applications when PC not shutdown for several days

    Next time it happens I'll see what's going on with the clock rate. I'm reasonably certain the processor isn't throttling down or everything would be much slower. It's entirely possible the video card might be going into some sort of energy saving or safe mode for some arcane reason. The weird...
  29. J

    Dell Dimension 2400 (not mine) stuck in UDMA-2

    I did check the BIOS and UDMA is enabled. I'm starting to think more and more this may be just a case of a defective 80-pin cable. I'll ask my friend to try the delete and redetect thing also.
  30. J

    Dell Dimension 2400 (not mine) stuck in UDMA-2

    I checked that already. They are in DMA mode, just they stuck in mode 2. I'll tell my friend to disconnect the non-boot drive as Fushigi said to see what happens. AFAIK, both drives are mode 5 capable. The Samsung was bought a few months ago. The WD is older, but since the transfer rate graph...
  31. J

    Dell Dimension 2400 (not mine) stuck in UDMA-2

    Yesterday I helped a friend install XP and otherwise get a Dell Dimension 2400 system he inherited from a neighbor into useable condition. Surprisingly since it was a Dell, everything went fine. The only glitch was that the hard disks (Samsung 250 GB, WD 80GB) are stuck in UDMA-2 (33 MB/sec). I...
  32. J

    Low fps in 3D applications when PC not shutdown for several days

    No, but that's a thought. I rebooted yesterday so it'll probably be a week or so before the problem reoccurs. I'll try that when it does. Same thing in lower resolutions. Besides, when I run MSTS in my native LCD resolution I can cut down the antialiasing while still getting a decent picture...
  33. J

    Low fps in 3D applications when PC not shutdown for several days

    Thanks for the answers so far. I was really hoping someone had seen something like this once and had a fix. I'm guessing it's a driver problem of some sort but I haven't been able to pin it down. It's definitely not page file related-I have 3GB RAM and have completely disabled the page file...
  34. J

    Something Random

    Eat your heart out ;) I was ripping a DVD while running Train Simulator.
  35. J

    Low fps in 3D applications when PC not shutdown for several days

    I've had this problem ever since I built my last machine. I'm not sure whether it also existed with my previous video card but it definitely exists with my present one (EVGA Geforce 6200). When the PC is freshly rebooted, I'll get decent frame rates in Train Simulator, often up to the maximum 60...
  36. J

    Something Random

    In a convoluted sort of way, this reminds me of Hollywood's idea of making a new movie by just remaking an old one.
  37. J

    Hot Deal: 4GB Corsair USB Flash Drive for $99 AR

    The 4GB PNY Optima I bought a few months back at Staples tests at 20 MB/sec for large file reads, about what Stereodude is getting. I didn't do any tests for small files, but don't forget that with a flash drive, even reading lots of small files shouldn't be much of a hit on performance due to...
  38. J

    FairTax

    No, the income tax was a bad idea from day one which is why it was purposely made illegal under the original US Constitution. I could probably write pages on why the income tax has caused a myriad of problems since it was enacted, but you can just as easily probably dig up the information on...
  39. J

    Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

    Here's the thread Tannin is referring to. The links to the article no longer work.
  40. J

    Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

    I'd say I'm already well below the average American's meat consumption. I'll get a pair of whopper juniors maybe every 3 weeks on average. That's the extent of my hamburger and fries fix. Outside of that, the only meat I eat is occasional meatballs with pasta and sauce, or meat otherwise used as...
  41. J

    FairTax

    I agree that taxing interest and capital gains is patently stupid if think about it for a while. If you get 3% on your savings account but the prevailing inflation rate is 5%, then you already lost 2% before you pay any taxes. Now if you have to pay perhaps a marginal rate of 33% on your...
  42. J

    FairTax

    Actually, having everyone pay the same is patently as unfair as a lot of the other schemes. Even without getting into the ability to pay, a lot of people will be paying for services they simply will never use. From a strictly fair standpoint, the best system is one where the user pays for...
  43. J

    Hobbies

    Electronics Model Railroading (just making structures and detailing trains as I don't have room for a layout) Cycling Computers Trainsimming Railfanning (mostly subways) Lighting (both general and flashlights) Refrigeration (peltier experiments and such) Very occasional coin...
  44. J

    Best Ingredient for Single Topping Pizza

    New York is the undisputed pizza capital of the free world. Maybe I'll get a pie at the local pizzeria and ship it to Indiana so Merc can see what he's missing. The Sicilian style is especially good.
  45. J

    Politics 2008

    Getting back to the main topic, I'm honestly not real passionate about any of these candidates. I like Huckabee's sales tax proposal, but his appeal to the fundamentalist wing means I probably disagree with him on just about everything else. McCain and Guiliani are too obsessed with terrorism to...
  46. J

    Politics 2008

    Somehow I think the fact that he's shorter than his wife might have something to do with that: I know it's a superficial reason, but Americans tend to vote or not vote for people based on superficial reasons.
  47. J

    End of the World As We Know It

    Before you go ahead and invest in gold you might want to have a look at this post. The recent run on gold looks quite similar to what happened in 1976-1980. It was followed by a drop, and then 20 years where the price did absolutely nothing. We might be in for a repeat.
  48. J

    Something Random

    World's largest pool. This thing would probably take me four minutes to lap on my bike, and I don't exactly ride slow. It's basically an artificial lake, for lack of a better description.
  49. J

    What punishment for illegal abortion...?

    And I give into my cravings for food more often as I should also. However, there's a huge difference between that and what we're talking about here. If I feel like having a bag of Doritos I can go out and buy it by myself. In fact, I had a bag last night, and some cookies also. Eating one bag...
  50. J

    What punishment for illegal abortion...?

    Well, what else would you suggest? We've told people about condoms, birth control pills, probably a hundred other means of avoiding pregnancy, yet we still have large numbers of unwanted births. None of those other methods really get to the heart of the matter. For that matter, abortion is just...
Top