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| 2005/2/3 [Computer/HW/CPU] UID:36044 Activity:moderate |
2/2 This is a really really cool CPU fan:
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=35-106-043&DEPA=0
\_ Meh. All that metal and yet they use a central fan. Which means
their fins aren't getting near optimal air flow at all.
\_ WHat's so cool about it?
\_ This supermega CPU fan reminds me of those supermega spoilers
kids put on their souped up Honda Civic. It is both funny and
ridiculous at the same time. |
| 2005/2/3 [Transportation/Car, Transportation/Car/Hybrid] UID:36045 Activity:high |
2/3 Can someone explain to me why no car mfgrs. produce a sports car
with a turbodiesel? I rode in a friend's A6 TDI, not a small auto,
which went like shit off a shovel. Just curious. -John
\_ Probably because not a lot of people like diesel, it's not even
economical anymore. Plus a sports coup with a turbo diesel would
probably not meet emmission standards, after all, diesel is
dirtier than regular unleaded.
\_ I think we've had this discussion before, about diesel vs. gas.
We're not talking about a diesel tractor engine, but something
like a CRD or TDI with particle burner, which runs very clean.
As far as I can tell, the main differences between a sports car
and small high-end coupes are the chassis, suspension, gearbox
and maybe performance tweaks to the engine, but not the
fundamental engine (i.e. where in between BMW 316 and M3 CSL
does it become a "sports car"?) Anyway, after some research I
found the C30 AMG. -John
\_ I _have_ heard that acceleration is one of the disadvantages
of diesel engines, but I am not an engine expert by any means.
-- ilyas
\_ Sure you can probably get diesel to be as clean as regular
unleaded. That's not really the point. The point is, why
bother when diesel is as expensive as gas for the end-user.
Plus, it would cost more to maintain since you'd have to
get special parts for it, etc. Diesel tanks also corrode
over time with mold/bacteria/etc. There are reasons why
diesel never became popular in the U.S. for consumer level
vehicles, and why it's still not necessarily as popular as
it could have been in Europe.
\_ Provincial fool! You're talking to Eurojohn. Euros love diesel.
Diesels tend to generate tons of torque but not too much HP.
But gas engines still get better performance for a sports car.
They can build the engine lighter and run higher rpms without
blowing up. And they sound cooler. Sports cars don't need to
pull stumps. A turbo gas engine of the same displacement would
probably go like even faster shit off a faster shovel.
\_ Related, are there any manufacturers besides VW selling TDIs in
California? I was very interested in one but I've nixed those plans
on account of VW's quality problems. TIA.
\_ Heil Eurotrash John!
\_ For one thing, diesel engines usually require more space to
generate the same HP as regular engines. Secondly, new
technologies such as the Accord Hybrid prove that motors
in fact generate a lot of torque which really helps you
get to red-line quickly even if your engine is starting
from near-idle speed. The new Accord Hybrid engine is small,
goes 0-60 in 6 seconds, is less than $30,000, and has 37MPG.
I doubt conventional diesel technology has all the
combinations of form size, torque, mileage, and price range
offered by hybrid technologies. |
| 2005/2/3 [Uncategorized] UID:36046 Activity:nil |
3/2 Bottom 50 blogs
http://www.chickenhead.com/bottom50/blogs.asp |
| 2005/2/3 [Computer/HW/Laptop] UID:36047 Activity:low |
2/3 When should I expect to see 'Sonoma Centrino' laptops become available
from the major vendors?
\_ It already is. They did a trade fair showing it off. Retail should
already be available or within the next month or so. |
| 2005/2/3 [Uncategorized] UID:36048 Activity:nil |
3/2 I just got a spam which contained this body (and a bunch of HTML)
"Our only aim is to get more money into own pocket at the end of
each month" I thought it was refreshingly honest. |
| 2005/2/3-4 [Finance/Investment] UID:36049 Activity:insanely high |
2/3 Do you put money in savings accounts, money markets or CDs?
\_ 99% checking, 1% cash.
\_ All of the above?
\_ how do you divide your money?
\_ stocks, mutual funds
\_ don't you have an emergency cash reserve?
\_ yes, it's called the wife
\_ But she has to compete with yermom on the streets
\_ For savings accounts, I really like ING. You won't find better
interest rates. Then I put some in CDs, and the rest in the market.
About a third evenly all around.
\_ i-bonds! http://csua.org/u/ay9 (treasury.gov)
\_ There is no point to CDs right now with rates so low. A savings
account and a money market are roughly the same in most
aspects, but the MM returns more. I only bother with a MM and
put very little in a savings tied to my checking. Most goes
into mutual funds of varying sorts (including MM-like types).
\_ Bleh, mutual funds are near worthless. Might as well just buy
QQQ on your own or just get the stock index fund.
\_ QQQ is an exchange traded mutual fund. Same idea as the
mutual fund with expense ratios and all.
\_ Thanks for the advice, Peter Lynch! If you really want
to know, I have an international fund, an index fund,
a bond fund, and a government bond fund and I am very
happy with them. You can feel free to put all of your
savings into GOOG.
\_ I don't really give a shit about what funds you personally
have. The point was that mutual funds in general are
worthless and the only funds you should invest in are
index funds such as QQQ. Just an FYI to people who
might be reading this and deciding on what they should
invest in.
The bottom line is: If you have the time buy bluechip
stocks and hold them.
If you don't have the time buy an index fund.
All other funds are worthless because they consistently
UNDERPERFORM the broad range bluechip market. In other
words, you're paying someone to do worse than simply
buying the index.
Frequent trading is worthless.
Owning stock in one single company may be worth something,
but you might also lose your shirt.
\_ Your point is idiotic. How will you get exposure to
the bond market without a bond fund? Buying
the NAQDAQ, Russell, Wilshire, or whatever index
is smart. That's why I bought it. It's also:
1. A mutual fund, 2. Only part of a portfolio.
Your statement that mutual funds in general are
worthless is retarded, especially when you advocate
buying an index fund.
\_ Try actually reading the statements, moron.
Mutual funds ARE worthless, because the ONLY funds
that consistently perform as well as the market
are INDEX funds, duhhhh! If that's the case all
you have to do is just buy the index, that means
buying and holding the bluechip stock individually.
It's not hard, it doesn't take a fucking Math
PhD to do this, and with Ameritrade it's cheap.
All you need is either a paper with stock prices
in it (i.e. Wall Street Journal people!) or
look it up on the web (again, not fucking hard
to do people!)
If you know absolutely NOTHING about buying stock
for $5 a trade and are afraid to manage your
portfolio or are too fucking lazy and want to pay
someone to do BASICALLY 20 HOURS OF WORK A YEAR
that's fine, go buy QQQ or Magellan or whatever
index fund you want. Capiche? Capiche, now stfu
and go comment on something you know about.
\_ You are a fucking retard!!! How will you get
exposure to the international market or to
bonds or to government-backed securities
without a mutual fund?! Your statement is
narrowly applied to the universe of US
equities. You use a lot of foul language, but
it doesn't conceal your stupidity. Mutual
funds are an easy way to get broad exposure
to different markets and as such are very
useful. You *can* buy T-bills and individual
stocks and perhaps even ADRs for every region
in the world, but mutuals make it cheap and
easy.
\_ I'm too ignorant about finance to tell which
of you two knows more about the subject, but
you're both very entertaining. Thank you.
\_ I would just like to point out that if
you had invested any money in QQQ from 2000-
2003 or so you got burned! Not that mutual
funds performed that much better ...
\_ You are an idiot.
\_ Bought QQQ at $100, eh?
\_ Sure. I DCA into the NASDAQ and
have since the early-mid 1990s. I
don't worry about a 3-4-10 year
period and neither should you.
\_ to both of you: please make a distinction between
actively traded mutual funds, and index funds.
Also, there are index funds which track different indices
such as bonds or international or sectors.
Foul language is also not necessary.
There are those who support the idea of using index funds
only.
\_ Often an index fund is a good buy. Many actively
managed funds do not beat their benchmarks. There is
no debate about that. The problem is when you are
trying to track 'microcap companies in a particular
nation' or similar. Indices do not exist for all
situations. A mutual fund can identify those
companies which are excluded from the index (or which
make up a miniscule % of the index) and purchase
shares. Sometimes individual investors cannot even do
that because of foreign regulations. If you decide to
weight heavily in small sectors like that then mutual
funds are great. Whether this is wise or not depends
on tolerance for risk, but one can certainly see
where individual equities or bonds might not be a fit
and no index (or only a poor approximation) exists.
\_ I don't keep a reserve. It is all in stocks and bonds. My
wife keeps a 2 month reserve though and she puts it a
savings account. I think she is being overly conservative.
\_ Are you nuts? I've got an 8-month cash reserve.
\_ This is all moot w/o knowing how much you make and
how much you spend. It's easy to save 8 months of
burger flipper salary. It's more difficult to save
8 months of MD salary. Expenses come into play, too.
\_ 8 months of my current lifestyle EXPENSES.
\_ Of course, but saving 8 months of
burger flipper expenses is pretty
easy. For most people, as income
rises so do expenses. If you live
with a roommate in a studio
apartment and ride bike to work then
you can have 8 months worth of
expenses saved easily. If you have
a mortgage and a car and such it is
much more difficult. Thus this x
month penis size comparison is lame.
\_ It's said that liars tend to assume
other people are lying. I guess
burger flippers make a similar
mistake.
\_ I think the point here is that
if your expenses are $120,000
per year (say) then keeping 8
months as a reserve is $80,000.
That's a lot of money to invest
in low risk investments "in
case of emergency." One can do
something better with that money
than a cash reserve. If it
comes to $8,000 it's quite
different.
\_ $8,000 to someone earning
$12,000 a year is a lot more
than $80,000 to someone earning
$120,000 a year. -tom
\_ Expenses, not earnings.
\_ "saving 8 months of burger
flipper expenses is pretty
easy." That may be true
for a fat sysadmin, but
it's not true for a
burger flipper. -tom
\_ I think you missed
the point. Saving
8 months of burger
flipper *expenses*
is easy on a fat
sysadmin *salary*.
Most people here
are in the latter salary
category, but expenses
are a choice.
\_ 8 months of expenses as single (no
SO) vs single (w/SO) vs married vs
married (w/children) are very
different.
\_ Perhaps I am nuts, I don't know. My job feels
pretty secure, we could live on either one of
our's salary and I have enough in stocks and bonds
equal to about 3 years salary, so even if the
market takes a dive, I can live for a long time
on that. I prefer more risk than you.
on that. Maybe I prefer more risk than you.
\_ I second that. Besides, if I get laid off,
company gives like 10.5 weeks of salary.
That's good enough for 5 months of expenses.
Add to that unemployment insurance, and I
can last 6-7 months. Also, if you are
invested in a diversified portfolio, with
ETFs, mutual funds, long, short bond funds,
etc., it's not that volatile, so there's
always something one can sell without too
much of a bad effect. Then there's
always family, if worse come to worse.
I don't buy the 8 months emergency cash
advice, unless you are rich and it
represents just a small portion of
your liquid assets. But in that case
why worry? I think the idea is to have
an emergency reserve of liquid assets as
opposed to an emergency reserve of plain
cash, and to not have any credit card
debt, or be living month to month due to
too expensive a lifestyle.
\_ Just because many mutual fund managers suck doesn't
mean there aren't good ones. I believe active management
still makes a difference if the fund manager is good.
And like one of the above posters have pointed out,
if you are interested in certain markets (eg. eastern
europe / russia / china / emerging asia, bonds, or even
Japan), you often have to buy a mutual fund. |
| 2005/2/3 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:36050 Activity:very high |
2/3 Obama for Pres.
\_ Obama lin Saden!
\_ Obama for Pres... in 20 years.
\_ Seriously guys, he only just got in the Senate. Let him
actually do something before you make him a saint.
\_ Saint, schmaint. I just want a Pres.
\_ I really don't know much about the guy, what makes him so
popular?
\_ Charismatic, young, liberal, good public speaker. The
overachieving son of an overachieving immigrant father.
\_ And yet, somehow not Republican. What's not to love?
\_ Not to mention true believer
\_ What does he believe in? Democracy? America?
\_ Spiderman!
\_ I don't understand it either. Although I'm proud to see
fellow Mixed person get so much press, it seems
underdeserved. If he does something like craft a balanced
budget, or start a successful initiative I would take
more notice.
\_ The first black president (if we ever elect one) will not be
a Democrat. -tom
\_ To quote you, "you're an idiot."
\_ He's not Black, he's Bi-racial, which means you could call
him as much White as Black. But electing even a Mixed
person would be an achievement for America as long as he was
qualified.
\_ He was raised in Hawaii by his white mother and grandmother,
so I don't think he's "black" in any way that really matters.
But that's not the way people in the red states see it. -tom
\_ Don't you know the one-drop rule?
\_ My bad, thought we were in the 21st century.
\_ The Democrats would never allow Bush to get a non-White
elected; I mean, just look at Gonzalez, right?
\_ That's because any non-white Republican is a traitor
to their race. They even have special racial epithets
for them, like "Uncle Tom" or "House Nigger."
\_ It's funny, but these are the horrifying words
that black people give to Condoleeza Rice and
Colin Powell. Bush has so many 'token' minorities
in his cabinet that I think they outnumber white
folks.
\_ Not even close, fella:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/cabinet.html
Two blacks, two asians and 11 whites.
\_ This is the current cabinet excluding Powell.
I was exaggerating, but the point is the
same. If 1/3 of the cabinet is 'token'
minorities are they really tokens? I find
that notion in itself to be offensive.
\_ Aren't minorities overrepresented (given
population proportions) in the Bush
cabinet? -- ilyas
\_ the next president will be Jeb Bush, not some lame ass Democrat
who has no connection, no clout, nothing, like our dumb ass
losers like Gore and Kerry. -disillusioned Democrat
\_ Man, I sure hope the Republicans can come up with someone
better than Jeb. I really think the whole elcet Jeb thing
is just democrat whining anyway. I sure do wish the dems
could come up with a reasonable canidate though. Is it
really THAT hard? --republican
\_ Funny. My view of the republican noise about Hillary is
similar to your view of the Jeb fears. I guess because the
hatred is so visceral on both sides. Just thinking about
Jeb raises my blood pressure, and my impression is that
a lot of republicans feel that way about Hillary. I'm
actually planning to register republican just so I can vote
against Jeb in the primary. That's how much I fucking
hate that guy. Call me irrational, but when a political
leader comes out in favor of voter fraud, I consider that
to be simply un-American, and worth fighting against.
\_ I agree with you on the Hillary thing. The dems would
have to be nuts to field Hillary.
\_ Obama is a marxist. In case you motd people who don't get out
much haven't noticed, Communism is dead.
Even worse, he is a muslim.
\_ It is funny to me that I can't tell the difference between
the trolls and the Real Bush Republicans anymore.
\_ yea, make the most powerful man in the world a marxist
muslim. The left's wet dream.
\_ Troll harder, young master.
\_ trite idiocy is not going to change his politics
or heritage.
\_ Link? |
| 2005/2/3 [Consumer/CellPhone] UID:36051 Activity:kinda low |
2/3 Don't dial your cell phone, jiggle it! (and the girl is kind of cute)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/02/03/shake.it.phone.ap
\_ Usually I consider jiggling my electronics to get them to work
a bad thing. |
| 2005/2/3-7 [Industry/Jobs] UID:36052 Activity:kinda low |
2/2 We just IPO'd and are hiring like mad. -ausman
http://www.planetoutinc.com/careers
also at /csua/pub/jobs/PlanetOut
All jobs are in San Francisco.
\_ gay!
\_ You don't have to be gay to work here, but you have to be
gay friendly.
\_ isn't that discriminatory?
\_ No. It's pretty reasonable to require prospective
employees to be able to get along with the existing
employees. You don't have to love homosexuality, but if
you have a serious problem with it, it will have major
impacts on your interaction with other employees and
customers.
\_ Wow, I didn't even write that! -ausman
\_ I think a great http://theonion.com story would be one about
a straight guy hired to work at Saks or Neiman Marcus
in SF and gets sexually harassed and made fun of by the
other male employees.
\_ Initial Public Out-of-the-closet? Congrats!
\_ dear religious conservatives like emarkp and jrleek, what do you
think about this company? Do you think it is immoral and that they
will fail and go to hell? Would you consider joining their company
for the purpose of converting these pagans into good Christians?
\_ Mmm, anonymous flamebait directed at specific sodans! Yay!
\_ The important distinction is the compnay is in the private sector.
Consequently, if they want to give "partnership" benefits to
random individuals, make the bathrooms gender
neutral, and make workers accept cross-dressers, and
promote unprotected sex with strangers
congrats to them. However, when you try to
force everyone to accept this, or even compensate you for
your lack of resposibility, at the point of a gun, using the
government as your agent, it becomes a problem. Is this really
that hard to understand?
\_ I nominate this as "most likely to get flamed"
\_ The first entry in the list says it's in New York.
\_ They just added that one.
\_ have you guys considered expanding to say, Oklahoma, Tennessee,
and Texas? Just as missionaries go to foreign countries to
spread their good will, maybe you guys can go abroad to spread
your belief as well.
\_ Not really, though the region a plurality of our members live
is The South. -ausman |
| 2005/2/3 [Computer/SW/WWW/Browsers] UID:36053 Activity:moderate |
2/2 What is the exact user-agent string I shouold give lynx, wget, curl and
the like to make them indistinguishable from say, MSIE browser running
on a wintel? Googling led me to to things as simple as MSIE or
something with parenthesized list and I am confused. Thanks.
\_ tail -f /var/log/httpd/access.log
\_ somebox% nc -l -p 8888
point your browser to be imitated at <DEAD>somebox:8888<DEAD>
copy the part after "User-Agent: " and use that.
--dbushong |
| 2005/2/3 [Politics/Domestic/Abortion, Politics/Domestic/California] UID:36054 Activity:nil |
2/3 http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/01/24_freshmen.shtml Liberalism outnumber Bushism by more than 4 to 1, freshmen liberalism on campus the highest since 1972. "Berkeley's white students are the most liberal ethnic group, at 59.9%. That is, white female students. White women were the most liberal group of all freshmen at Berkeley, at 65.9%" Too bad this doesn't mean they will date Asian men -Asian \_ do we really have to encourage the Cal Patriot? |
| 2005/2/3-5 [Computer/HW/Memory, Computer/HW/Drives] UID:36055 Activity:moderate |
2/3 So, I'm really confused about this notion of computer science
metrics where everything's kind of 2^n, but sometimes not. For
example, if I have a 4 GIG hard drive, does that mean I have
exactly 2^32 bytes of space? Does that translate to 4000000000
bytes, or some number that's close to it? How about megahertz?
Say I have a 2.5GHz computer, does it run at exactly 2500000
hertz? Or 2^n for some multiple of n?
\_ As a few other people have said, just about everything is ordinary
decimal units now. A 4G hard drive is (about) 4,000,000,000 bytes,
and a 2.5GHz processor runs at (about) 2,500,000,000 Hertz.
Operating systems still tend to report file sizes in binary units,
though, so a 4G file is probably 4,294,967,296 bytes. (Sometimes
it's configurable: GNU du and df let you specify -h for binary
units or -H for decimal.) The only hardware still sold in binary
units is memory -- a 1G flash memory card is 1,073,741,824 bytes.
Also note that all storage devices are sold by raw capacity, not
counting filesystem overhead.
\_ I'd actually argue that in computers, all standards and measurements
are 10^n with the exception of RAM and addresses. HDDs, bandwidth,
frequency, resolution (megapixels) are all base ten.
\_ The ISO standard (IIRC) is Gibibytes for 2^30 and Gigabytes for
10^9. Memory is addressed by logic which is friendly to powers of
2. Non-memory doesn't matter.
\_ Frequencies (Hertz) are not stated in powers of two obviously.
You can usually find the exact frequency in the tech specs.
Computer data quantities are normally referred to with binary
prefixes (kilo=1024). Hard drive producers use 1000 because
they are fuckers. A frequency is not a data quantity.
\_ The whole k=1024 thing was a cute hack invented by computer
folks, but it becomes imcreasingly strained as you move into
mega- and giga- prefixes. At some point you need to admit it's
more trouble than it's worth. The computer should be the one
worrying how to address it's memory in base-2, rather than the
end user wondering how many bytes are in a gig.
\_ Memory is sized in 2^n because that's how the chips are laid out.
The capacity of a hard drive is determined by the track width
and magnetic domain size. This gives you a non-binary capacity.
It makes sense to therefore measure it using the SI system. The
fact that CS people started calling 1024 and 1048576 kilo- and
mega- when those prefixes had been in use for ages says to me
that the CS people are the fuckers, not the engineers who are
just adhereing to standard terminology. I personally count all
file and data sizes in base-10, except when refering to memory
usage. Anyway, this debate has been done to death before.
\_ so 1M is what really? 1000000 or 10^20?
\_ Officially, 10^6 (you mean 2^20, right?).
M = 10^6, Mi = 2^20
See:
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
\_ No, it doesn't make sense when you're talking about computer
storage capacity to use a different meaning of GB than
everybody normally uses when talking about computer storage.
It's not like the drives are storing non-binary data. It's
going to have a filesystem and store vanilla kilobytes and
megabytes. Nowhere else does Gbyte refer to 1000*1000*1000.
In a computer environment, files are loaded into memory and
to disk, it's idiotic to change the terminology just because
the underlying media is different. CD and DVD storage is
referred to in binary. Sorry, you're wrong.
\_ FWIW, floppies are counted under a bastardized hybrid
system where 1.44 'megabytes' = 1440 KiB, or 1.44k-KiB
\_ No. CDs and DVDs are counted base-10, as is bandwidth.
The fact that the drives are storing binary data has no
bearing on the method you use to count the bytes, which
this debate shows, is a matter of dueling conventions, not
some underlying fact. I'm not wrong, you're just an ass.
\_ The orange book standard says a cd has a capacity
of 650*2^20 bytes.
\_ A DVD+-R(W) is 4.7*10^9
\_ Hard to argue, since they charge $5,000 for a
copy of a DVD format spec ($500 for each
additional spec) and require an NDA. Do you
actually have access to the four specs you
mention? The holder of DVD Forum's specs is
http://www.dvdfllc.co.jp |
| 2005/2/3 [Recreation/Dating] UID:36056 Activity:nil Cat_by:dlong |
2/3 Dear soda luzer virgins, this is your only chance to interact
physically with a woman: http://axefeather.com/index_pop.aspx
\_ I don't think 'physically' means what you think it means.
\_ virtually physical contact. TURN UP THE SOUND!!! It is so cool.
it is actually my only interaction with a woman, THANK YOU.
\_ Apply at ausman's company and maybe you'll meet a nice guy. |
| 2005/2/3 [Politics/Domestic/RepublicanMedia] UID:36057 Activity:high |
2/3 What is the most non-intrusive web site that you wouldn't mind your
boss seeing you looking at? Javadoc? CNN? Google/Yahoo? I'm asking
because I'm thinking of writing a program that translates
controversial stuff (like freerepublic) to make it look like Yahoo
email so that my boss wouldn't say something about it. ok thx
\_ http://salary.com
\_ http://fuckedcompany.com
\_ http://m2m4sex.com
\_ goat.cx of course
\_ Our regression status report internal page. Actually I can imagine
making it link to news stories and formatting the stories as test
output. Haha. |
| 2005/2/3-7 [Industry/Jobs] UID:36058 Activity:low |
2/3 IGN / Gamespy is hiring. J2EE, .NET, DBA, C++, a ton of marketing
and sales, some creative folks such a graphic artists and video
producers. Even a lawyer. Some jobs in Brisbane and a couple are down
in Irvine. All listed online. email for info. -shac
http://corp.igngamespy.com/jobs.html
\_ I love the qualifications:
- Minimum of 5 years experience creating features for a hi-profile
Windows application in widespread use.
\_ and then?
\_ J2EE is an acronym that stands for "Horrible Fucking Job That You
Don't Want." |
| 2005/2/3 [Science/GlobalWarming] UID:36059 Activity:nil |
2/3 Toughest sport in the world?
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,10488,1404903,00.html |
| 3/15 |