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12/24 |
2012/8/5-10/17 [Finance/Shopping] UID:54454 Activity:nil |
8/5 VPS is a LOT cheaper than EC2 by at least 5X and sometimes 10X. Why is EC2 so popular when the price is not even competitive? http://secure.johncompanies.com/signup/step1.html?svc=linux http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing \_ One month of standard with 600GB of bandwidth is $39/mo for VPS. For a year that would be $428. That is about the same price as an EC2 medium instance for a year. Where do you get the 5X from? \_ VPS is not terribly elastic, and hasn't got a rich API w/ programmable network and storage services? |
2010/1/25-30 [Recreation/Food, Finance/Shopping] UID:53663 Activity:high |
1/25 I went to Ranch 99 for the first time recently. Lots of interesting items, but the place got a "yuck" for its cleanliness factor and so I left without buying anything. I went to a Japanese market and it was antiseptic in comparison and the fish/meats looked much fresher, too. Did I happen to choose a bad location or is this chain going to sell me food that makes me sick? I was not impressed. \_ I go McD fol first time. Lots of intelesting food, but the prace got a "yuuck" for rack of selections and so I left without buying anything. I go France Market and it was prettier in comparison and the food was so much flesher, too. Did I happen to choose a bad Amelican fast food or are all Amelican fast food sell shit that make me puke porridge? I was not implessed. I don't go out much, enrighten me prease. -foreign man \_ "foleign" \_ I dunno what fucked up place you come from but most places have at least the R* or L* phoneme in place. if you're going to affect a fake accent at least try to get it right, we live in a post-house-laurie world now. \_ china vs japan. \_ 99 Ranch is a Taiwanese market, not Mainland Chinese. (Whether Taiwan is/isn't part of China is a separate debate.) \_ "The House is on FIRE!" "no no this isn't a house it's an apartment, and thus your argument is refuted." \_ Are you trolling or genuinely this stupid? If you don't know if you're either one, god help. \_ I detect ignorance... lack of exposure to the world. The guy is obviously a dumb ass, give him a break \_ Enlighten me with your wisdom. \_ Contrary to what you've been told in UPN or whatever, asian cultures are not the same, and furthermore, stores for poorer people are generally filthier than stores for rich people. Ranch 99 caters to *students* who are traditionally poor/cheap. And Mainland chinese hygiene is pretty bad. Just ask what the "red spittle juice" street paintings are. \_ Plus Taiwanese culture and Mainland Chinese culture are different. \_ Dude, I have no idea who Ranch 99 purports to cater to, but I can tell you that most of the customers were not students judging by their ages. So if Ranch 99 is for 'poor people' then what is the 'rich people' equivalent? \_ which Ranch 99? In my experience, Albany was really clean, San Mateo/not so clean, Cupertino, SPARKLING \_ Yeah, poor people get dirty stores, rich people get nice clean stores. This is true everywhere. \_ Give me an example of a clean Chinatown. \_ Cupertino. \_ Palos Verdes Estates \_ Not PVE. You mean RPV. \_ Manchukuo \_ Monterey Park, San Marino, Arcadia, South Pasadena \_ I actually went to the Arcadia "Ranch 99". Since I went there have been 3 muggings in the parking lot. What a dump. \_ Yokohama |
2009/11/1-9 [Finance/Shopping, Health/Women] UID:53489 Activity:nil |
11/1 http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/11/01/0027242/Evolutions-Path-May-Lead-To-Shorter-Heavier-Women?from=rss Shorter, heavier women bear more children, at earlier age than taller, skinner women who bear fewer. Women in the future will be 2cm shorter and 1kg heavier. Well, DUH! White American women aren't reproducing as fast as colored immigrants that mass produce children. |
2009/7/31-8/11 [Computer/Companies/Apple, Finance/Shopping] UID:53226 Activity:high |
8/1 PCs are cheaper and offer more bang for bucks. So why do I still prefer Apple? To signal reproductive suitability. The same reasons why people buy stupid fancy cars and stupid name brand clothes. \_ You and the women you're trying to get are iDiots of the Cult of Steve. iPhones/iMacs don't last as long as Roles nor do they Steve. iPhones/iMacs don't last as long as Rolexes nor do they appreciate like Bentleys. Yet they are symbols of wealth? Have you tried on a tailored armani? it feels GREAT. Unlike my experience with Spotlight w/ ext raids or TimeCapsule. people buy stupid fancy cars and stupid name brand clothes. \_ I'm pretty sure the richest man in the world uses a PC not an Apple. \- That is what is called a "signalling good". There are "weak" singalling goods, and a Apple computer is at best a weak singalling good, but is mostly "useful". A rolex watch is a little bit more of a signalling good ... it's slightly higher quality in terms of accuracy, it to some extent self-advertises [the rolex crown], but is not super obvious about it [medium "bling" factor], but you certainly get an acceptable time telling watch for much cheaper. One reason people were excited about the "I am rich" app on the iPhone is it was a rare "pure" signalling good ... it literally had no other use than to say "i can burn a $1000". There is an interesting study about minorities and singalling goods: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1963 (BTW, there are obviously goods that signal things other than wealth ... and arguably an apple laptop sends a stronger signal about something other than income). --psb \_ Lots of Burning Man camps are literally signalling "I can burn $1000s" to peers and potential mates. -ausman \_ I've never been to BM, what does this mean? I thought a bunch of bums just go there to have fun and watch naked women dance while drinking alcohol. \_ BM is a mirror to your soul. You tend to get out of it whatever you bring to it, I have found. whatever you bring to it, I have discovered. \_ I agree. Of course you could also say most of life is like that! No one owes you a good time. --brain \_ that's why it costs about 300 pound sterling to go. \_ It means, that just like in the real world, women and courtiers respond well to displays of wealth and power. Note: displays aren't/don't have to be == to the reality. \_ There is a whole field of game theory devoted to this. \_ There is a whole branch of game theory devoted to this. Needless to say, people are pretty good at distinguishing between real and fake displays, for very important reasons. \_ not when they're rolling on E and doing a few lines. \_ not when they're rolling on E and snorting a few lines I think the people you're referring to are grown up 40 somethings who spend hours analyzing things. Not the 20 somethings roaming around burning man. \_ Actually, young women are pretty good about this, not too surprisingly. Hence the literally burning thousands of dollars comment. Nothing signals reproductive fitness than spending thousands of dollars on some cool toy you spent hundreds of hours (or even better, got other's free labor) and then burning it up. hours building (or even better, got other's free labor) and then burning it up. hours building (or even better, got other's free labor) and then burning it up. \_ that's why young women shag guys running startups. \_ is this what happened to hotshot dans? |
12/24 |
2009/2/5-10 [Finance/Shopping] UID:52522 Activity:kinda low |
2/5 There's no reason only poor people should get infected by malaria. --Bill Gates, just before releasing a bunch of mosquitos at TED: http://csua.org/u/ngw \_ So he supports repealing bans on DDT? \- the DDT ban has a interesting backstory. It is worth reading about. \_ There are plenty of ways to kill mosquitoes without DDT, and mosquitoes in malaria areas have mostly developed resistance to it. -tom \_ DDT is quite cheap and worth distinguishing between pesticide use and public health use. DDT can reduce malaria without needing to kill resistant mosquitos. \_ DDT is quite cheap and worth distinguishing between (agri) pesticide use and public health use. DDT can reduce malaria levels without needing to kill resistant mosquitos. And poor people running high risks can reasonably have a different future discount rate. \_ DDT is only cheap to the extent that its costs are externalized. -tom \_ Poor people who say dont take jet planes around the world have a big "externality" quota. And by that measure, the costs of the "ban" on DDT arent internalized either. \_ Don't kid yourself; the lack of decent mosquito- abatement programs in poor countries has virtually nothing to do with the ban on DDT. -tom \_ You know that DDT is still used for vector control in quite a few countries, right? It is just not sprayed indescriminately for ag use the way it used to be. Is there some weird Right Wing meme about DDT these days or something? Did Rush start talking about it on his show or something? For some reason, I have heard a lot about it lately. it on his show? For some reason, I have heard a lot about it lately. \- It's not much of a contemporary issue and is not a right wing issue. But there are a number of issues common to global warming: who will bear the present costs, technology vs behavior change as an issue, future discount, future discount incorporating differntial impact and resources etc. There are also some analogous problems when it comes to antibiotics ... but I'm trying to avoid getting into long motd conversations, so i'll leave it at that. |
2008/7/23-28 [Finance/Shopping] UID:50663 Activity:nil |
7/23 Sometimes Fedex is actually cheaper (huge boxes) and sometimes USPS is cheaper. Media (book/CD) in particular is the cheapest with USPS but many items I sell on eBay are not CDs/books. UPS has rarely been cheap for me. This is all very confusing and eating up my profit margins. Is there a site that'll help me find out which service would be cheaper for the different types of packages I send out? \_ I'm curious about this as well. I was just checking all 3 sites for every package. \_ Just add shipping as a cost borne by the purchaser on EBay. |
2008/7/23-28 [Reference/Tax, Finance/Shopping] UID:50661 Activity:high |
7/23 So tom, how does it feel to be rich? You're in the top 10% you know. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121659695380368965.html \_ Where are the numbers for all the other taxes we pay, like payroll, sales, etc? Oh yeah, just ignore all the facts that don't advance your pro-inherited wealth ideology. \_ So, how does it feel to be an anonymous coward? -tom \_ I'm not pro-tax by any means, but isn't it pathetic that the top 1% of the country earns double what the bottom 50% does? It would not necessarily be positive even if the chart showed the top 1% paying 99% of the taxes if they also earn 99% of the income leaving the other 99% to fight over crumbs. Also, I'd like to see a similar chart which shows after-tax income. \_ Why is it pathetic? \_ No! The standard of living has improved for every segment \_ You think this is a Good Thing? \_ No. I just don't find it very surprising. The bottom 50% are economically rather useless. Supply and demand... why would a single diamond be worth more than a ton of normal rocks? \_ I have more respect more American workers than that. I could see if you said bottom 10%, but bottom HALF? \_ Everyone in the bottom half is "below average". And "average" isn't very good in this country (or any other country, really). I'm not saying they're worthless. But they aren't rare snowflakes and they're probably not even trying that hard to improve themselves, as long as they have their food + home + sex. \_ I actually think American workers have a strong work ethic and are among the best in the world. It's interesting that when foreign management employs US workers they can achieve amazing results that US management cannot. I am not prepared to write-off millions of US workers. Those workers made us the economic engine we are today and by continually outsourcing, placing low expectations on them, and taking advantage of them, we are getting what we deserve. I'd rather have 10 poorly educated American workers with a work ethic over 10 over-educated Europeans workers who whine all the time and expect lots of time off. BTW, average and median are two different things. I am not sure that 50% of US workers are actually "below average". \_ Spoken like a dumb patriot. \_ Spoken like someone who knows how hard Americans work. Check out average work-weeks. \_ They are the bottom 50% lowest paid people. Why do you think they have a strong work ethic? Who knows what they do? Anyway, there may be a lot of part time workers in those statistics -- part time working parents, or school kids with jobs. The top 50% makes 88% and 12% for the bottom. Without more data to go on, I don't see a reason to get too excited. And I'm not going to do a bunch of research right now. \_ 1. I've actually been in the workplace and seen that salary does not correlate to work ethic 2. Just look at the statistics for number of hours worked per week 3. If you don't see a problem with half the country making 12% of the income then there's no hope for you anyway. You got yours, right? \_ 1. Work ethic isn't good enough. You can work hard but if you're stupid or otherwise not valuable it does not mean jack. There are billions of people on Earth and merely working N hours isn't very valuable. \_ I beg to differ. If you're willing to work hard there's a lot of inherent value in that even if you're stupid. Someone has to build roads, harvest crops, work the cash register, and so on. \_ But anybody can work that cash register. That's the point. There is no scarcity of bodies willing to do unskilled work for a few bucks. Therefore the value is low. Supply and demand. \_ Anybody can work it. Not everyone has the work ethic to show up on time and do it for 8 hours per day 250 days per year. You can't say "well that's without value". It is wasting \_ If it had real value it wouldn't be underpaid. duh \_ You don't really believe this do you? The price pressures are external to the US markets. Think of how much $$$ we could save by outsourcing our management for lower-paid foreign management instead of saying that a person making $9/hour is overpaid because someone in India can do the job for $1/hour. We could save more by cutting that 88% of earners versus putting more pressure on the 12% half. \_ The companies are run/owned by these 88%. You can't cut them. The entire point is they are not drones being told what to do by somebody higher up. They are the top. Responsibility. What world do you live in which is full of fuckups who can't even show up to an easy job? Working \_ The real world. I can tell you never managed low-level employees before. the Safeway cash register is air conditioned and they can take breaks. You don't need one person to do it 250 days a year either, there are shifts. \_ You need *someone* there 250 days per year when they say they are going to be there. Compare to Europe where such employees make more to do less. \_ Why Europe? Try a country without a generous benefits which make work effectively unnecessary. a valuable resource in a menial task that could be doing something less menial if big business realized it and took advantage of it. This is what US management overlooks and foreign management does not. They know how valuable it is, because they don't have that. Addendum: Have you noticed that as salaries have fallen (due to global competition and outsourcing) that jobs that "anyone can do" are being done poorly? I had to call AT&T and I was ready to praise God when I finally was transferred to a CSR in Atlanta versus an "anyone" in India and the Philippines. But supposedly this American is overpaid and needs to be outsourced when earning her share of 12% of the income in the country. BS. \_ No I haven't noticed that. AT&T does not give a shit about CSRs because you're still their customer and their competition also has crap CSRs. I pick low price vs good CSRs every time. You should pay extra for your precious CSRs. Also: you are assuming that CSR is bottom 50% -- unfounded. But hey, they need no education and only need to be able to communicate. You have a weird worldview if you think that alone deserves top-50% income. \_ It doesn't deserve top-50% income. What it deserves is more than 12% of the pie. \_ Why? They mostly are living just fine, and better than billions. 2. see above 3. It's not half the country, it's half the income tax filers. Did you go to school? I don't remember everyone having a strong work ethic. We're in a globalized economy where people's simple jobs of the past are more cheaply done by foreigners who are cheaper and more motivated. That said most people in this country still live very well even with low wages. \_ So your argument is that there are a lot of retirees and students skewing the statistics? I find that hard to believe. Regardless, those people need to survive, too. Just because someone is retired doesn't mean their income can go to zero. \_ We haven't talked about their income going to 0. We've talked about their share of the income pie. The pie is pretty huge. \_ All the more disgusting that the top 5% get most of it. \_ They create most of it. \_ You don't really believe that do you? Are they valuable? Yes. Are they generating value-added commensurate with income? No. How many CEOs rake in millions while their companies (and share price) go into the toilet? http://tinyurl.com/8n8ro I would argue McNealy gets a pass for what he's done for the company, but maybe not. Do companies pay for past success or present results? \_ But look at the long term growth. Long term economic growth is phenomenal and all the drones benefit from this. The drones do not benefit from _/ this. The average wage for American workers has not gone up since the 70s. For workers with no college degree, it has actually gone down. \_ I don't think wages tell the whole story. Would you rather live with an average wage in an average town in 1975 or now? Does that wage figure include "supplemental compensation" like health insurance, retirement plans, and social security payments made by employers? Or the quality of health care? Or technological advancements such as cell phones and PCs? This report is interesting: http://www.bea.gov/scb/pdf/2008/07%20July/D-Pages/0708dpg_d.pdf Check out "Supplements to wages and salaries" as a percentage of national income. And consider: Population went from 200M to 300M since 1970, and the global economy is much more competitive. \_ The gains have almost entirely gone to the top: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2006prel.pdf Look at the chart labled "Real Annual Income Growth by Groups" I don't think that increases in the cost of health insurance really should be considered as increases in the standard of living, though perhaps I would feel differently if I was in bad health. \_ Well, ok. But the population size has grown tremendously and a huge number are foreign born. The economy has accommodated them and still grown. By 2050, 1 in 5 of the US population is projected to be hispanic. This part is interesting: "The evidence suggests that top incomes earners today are not "rentiers" deriving their incomes from past wealth but rather are "working rich," highly paid employees or new entrepreneurs" Massive immigration and global competition depressed wage growth for the lower groups. Jobs that are more independent of this type of competition see big gains, like doctors. The best thing for the lower classes here would be to improve conditions in Mexico and have a lower population growth there. I guess this brings us back to the global inequality/barbarians in Rome theory. \_ I am in agreement with you. \_ No! The standard of living has improved in every segment of wealth and it's none of your business to implement progressive tax, that's COMMUNISM!!! -libertarian \_ I said I'm not pro-tax. I don't necessarily think raising taxes solves any problems. It just seems to make government larger. It doesn't really help anyone. However, what other ways can we address this inequality? \_ Inequality has never been a problem throughout the history of empires. The Roman emperors knew that long time ago. As long as the populace has bread (beer+pizza) and circus (football, plasma), there will never be issues for the governing party. \_ So how did that whole Rome thing work out for them? \_ It worked quite well for a very, very long time. The US is a young nation in comparison. \_ How can you say inequality was not a problem with a straight face when it caused the entire Western civilization to collapse into centuries of Dark Ages? \_ My point is as long as people have bread and circuses there will not be a problem. panem et circenses. \_ My point is that your point is wrong, because Rome fell and set the world back at least 500 years, if not more, as a result. So clearly there were some problems. \_ Your notion that Rome's fall was the fault just of "inequality" is silly. There was no one single thing. There were huge tribal migrations, plagues, climate changes (hey hey), cultural turbulence with Christianity and then Islam etc. Rome kept going in the east anyway... if the world was set back then that probably goes back to the fall of the Republic and onset of Christianity. \_ Especially since early Rome was not especially egalitarian, with slaves, very restricted citizenship rights, etc., but it flourished just fine. \_ Actually, inequality was probably the greatest contributor. Why? Because the barbarians wanted what Rome had and because Rome consumed more resources than it could honestly produce sustainably except through conquest (sound familiar?). It was only late in the game that the Romans started to grant citizenship to foreigners in an effort to prevent a total collapse as it became more and more difficult to defend the far-flung Empire from people ticked off at their inequitable treatment so that wealthy Romans could have gold-plated toilets. Inequality here doesn't refer to classes within Roman citizenry as much as it does inequality between Romans and the rest of the world, including occupied territories and Roman residents never granted citizenship. \_ And here I thought it was the Barbarians that sacked Rome. \_ I can only shake my head in disbelief at this statement. \_ What, you think the Romans sacked themselves? It was the Visigoths, in 410. \_ Forest for the trees, dude. |
2008/4/3-9 [Finance/Shopping, Transportation/PublicTransit] UID:49656 Activity:nil |
4/3 What is cheapest parking near Embarcadero / Montgomery BART? Yes I know this is a weird question. \_ The St. Mary's Square garage was last I checked (2006). Anything at about $20 is good. Anything at about $20 is good (north of Market). \_ No, it is not weird at all. You can park in SOMA, at 2nd and Folsom, for $12/day. The address is 303 2nd St. You can park one block further away at 600 Harrison St, for $10/day. The area is mildly seedy after dark, but mostly safe these days. -ausman |
2007/12/20-29 [Finance/Shopping] UID:48846 Activity:low |
12/20 anyone got a source of good looking free clip art for network diagram type stuff, suitable for use in Inkscape or Opendraw? Yes I am too cheap to buy Visio. \_ Doesn't this question come up about every other week? \_ It sure does! I tried Inkscape, couldn't handle it. \_ too cheap for visio, but are you cheap enough to use xfig ? google for 'network diagram' and 'linux' and you'll find a host of other free options too. \_ http://www.openclipart.org |
2007/12/5-7 [Finance/Shopping, Finance/Investment] UID:48748 Activity:high |
12/4 Fed's guide to save the economy (feel free to add): -print more money -lower interest rate \_ that sounds more like a recipe for inflation to me. \_ Inflation might save the economy by allowing us to pay back debts with cheap dollars. In fact, I think this is the idea. \_ Is there a less painful way to get rid of the huge debt than inflating it to insignificance? \_ Exactly. Inflation isn't always bad from the government's perspective. Inflation has worked before, and it'll work again. -finish collapsing the dollar so we can switch to the Amero! - Bushonomics in action \_ What exactly is Bushonomics? More tax cuts? Unlikely in the light of the Federal deficit. \_ Massive deficit spending, tax cuts, more defence spending. Continuing to drive down the value of the dollar in hopes of closing the trade gap. \_ How are we supposed to close the trade gap when the US doesn't actually produce much that the world wants to buy? Start selling US properties? \_ Developing countries buying US properties is an interesting situation. By buying a US asset, they are effectively investing in the US economy, instead of their own. Buying a US asset or US services pumps money into the US economy. Obviously, if US stuff was cheap enough the world would want to buy it. They already buy lots of our big ticket items like jumbo jets, large industrial equipment, etc. Most Chinese manufacturing is not so specialized that you couldn't just do it here if it was cost effective. \_ It will never be as cost effective, because the US cares more about worker rights, the environment, consumer safety, and so on. \_ Never is a long time. -Start a new war -Stop foreclosures by bailing out dumb asses. |
2007/11/29-12/6 [Recreation/Travel/LasVegas, Finance/Shopping, Finance/Banking] UID:48711 Activity:nil |
11/29 I just found out that I am American Indian. The White Man took away my ancestors' ancestral lands, stuck them in camps, you know, the usual. I am perfectly functional member of society. What are some cool ways I can take advantage of my status? Can I get cheap loans? Grants? ok tnx. \_ What percentage and what tribe? I understand that With some tribes you can get grants, or casino funds. I think for most tribes you don't get jack. But, IANAI. \_ Become an alcoholic. \_ Can you prove it? There are lots of Native Americans who cannot prove that they are because of poor documentation. If you can't prove it then forget it. \_ Live on the Res. \_ Tell us what tribe and I might be able to tell you your chances of getting anything from this, but: you need to be enrolled, the tribe doesn't have to enroll you even if you qualify on paper, most tribes with money require that you live on the res and despite what some motd posters think, the typical tribe member is not sitting in that casino hotel jacuzzi snorting coke with $100 bills. \_ Are you crazy? Try $20 bills. |
2007/1/17-25 [Finance/Shopping] UID:45557 Activity:nil |
1/17 What's the cheapest and most effective way to monitor your credit? My CC company is offering an Identity Protection program where they monitor your credit every day for $9.95/month. Is there anything cheaper than this? |
2006/11/10-12 [Recreation/Dating, Finance/Shopping] UID:45317 Activity:high |
11/10 Hi sodans. Engagement rings again. What do people think of a 0.70 carat ring at http://bluenile.com for $2,500 (+$500=$3K for setting)? Will her parents think I'm cheap? My SO has indicated that she would rather spend the money on something useful (car, crap, etc.). Do women really want 1 carat minimum? I know about Apollo Diamond, but it's not mature (ob blood diamond discussion). Also, is a Signature Ideal diamond really that much better than a Very Good cut diamond? Thanks. \_ It's fine. Be glad you found a women that has a bit more sense than just how big a ring you can give her. Why would it matter what her parents think? I bought my wife something similar to what you are thinking of getting. Out of the four C's, I go for cut, color, clarity, and carat in that order. The better cut does give a better "fire". \_ I bought my wife's engagement ring for less than $300 and wedding ring for less than $1k. Now *that* was cheap. We put the money on properties, cars (not fancy ones) and savings instead. \_ Before you buy anything, check out the past discussions on "debeers" and "De Beers" in the MOTD archive. \_ We have synthetic diamonds now. Screw De Beers. -!op \_ If someone came up with a process to create diamond rings for like $100 that match today's $3000 ones, would people still value giving those? \_ I hope not. Down with jewlrey! \_ Yeah. But from the MOTD archive, De Beer "also started a PR program to convince people that synthetic diamonds are like cheating by buying a cubic zirconia and that if you really love your woman you'll get her a 'real' diamond." So don't fall to that BS. love your woman you'll get her a 'real' diamond." \_ If you really love your woman, you'll buy her this jar filled with the blood of african children killed so that rich people can show off their bad taste. $3000 OBO. \_ You know, It actually would not be crazy to try to start something where one pays 3000 dollars for a 100 dollar piece of jewlery plus a 2900 dollar loan/grant to a non-diamond related African business. If this caught on, men could avoid being called cheap, but have a net positive effect instead of net negative effect on the African economy. \_ You're insane. Yes, let's buy milk bottle rings for our wives and send millions of dollars every year to stuff the pockets of which corrupt what? Seriously, you're either a troll or you've never had a girlfriend. \_ GO DE BEAH! \_ Her parents have nothing to do with it. If you still care about her/your/anyone else's opinion on how you live your life at this level you're likely not ready for a serious relationship. It is none of their business. You should talk with her about it. As far as size of the stone goes, see above about the 4 Cs. Cut is most important because that is the shape of the stone. Good color and clarity will make whatever you have look better. Carat count beyond about .5 or .6 is all about showing off to the Jones'. Unless you're marrying the Jones' or her parents don't worry about that. Also, most marriages that end in divorce do so because of money problems. Don't spend a zillion bucks on a rock and a party just to get divorced 6 months later because you're broke and every penny spent is a big fight. \_ Do you get one diamond engagement ring plus a diamond wedding ring later? Or is that the same ring? Also, I thought you're supposed to have the ring when you propose, not discuss it. \_ The wedding ring is not supposed to have a rock in it. It's supposed to be a band, representing eternity. Maybe op should get a mobious strip ring. \_ Typically engagement ring has the diamond. Your fiance wears that between your engagement until your wedding day. She doesn't wear that ring at the ceremony because the wedding band is suppose to go on first. Something to do with "closer to the heart." She slips the engagement ring back on (band first, then ring) after the ceremony. \_ ok thanks, I guess I was always a bit confused about that \_ And of course, it's common to get them as a set so they can be welded together after the wedding. \- ObDeBeers=EvilFuckers: http://home.lbl.gov:8080/~psb/Articles/Politics/DeBeers=Evil.txt \_ I agree. I think it's silly to buy diamonds. Fortunately I married a woman who agrees. -pp \_ After all that is being said and the evil of De Beer. Do keep in mind, that 20 years down the road, the diamond will still be a diamond, but other things that you might have bought with the diamond money, such as that plasma TV, the killer laptop, will probably be out of service and money down the toilet. ;) \_ Of course, if you invested, 20 years down the road you will probably have doubled your money. \- "a diamond is still a diamond" is not an argument. part of the "problem" with diamonds ... again de beers is partly responsible ... is there is no real secondary mkt for diamonds. while the diamond is durable [assuming it doesnt get stolen or lost], it isnt liquid. given that a "used" diamond should be as good as a new diamond, it's the depressed value of "used" diamonds that is interesting [compare to high value of "used" DVDs]. 3.5% return = double money in 20yrs. [ob nominal/real disclaimer] \_ Or put another way: The TV depreciates over a few years, the diamond depreciates instantly! \- that's a compelling way of putting it. and gives me an excuse to contrast it to the depreciation of other things. shoes get worn out. tv also gets worn out but more importantly quality goes up and prices fall. in the case of a car, it wears out, the quality goes up, and there is the mkt for lemons informations up, and there is the mkt for lemons information aysmmetry problems [you dont know if the car has been in an accident ... not generally a problem with TVs ... although it is true TVs unlike cars dont have an odometer ... on the other hand a tv pretty much jut does one thing: have a picture, which cars have transmission, tires, body, cosmetic issues suspension etc]. so really a diamond is sort of like a DVD ... it really doesnt wear out and what you see should be what you get [minus the small chance the DVD is scratch ... but surely you can get a guarantee it will play fine]. but a DVD really doesnt depreciate much at all! and the diamond is something you would expect would hardly depreciate ... it doesnt get worn out, they dint get cheaper or better over time, there isnt much info asymmetry [except maybe some chance it is stolen ... not also the very idea of "used vs new gold" is silly], it's price would be the panda says "no!" _/ \- http://csua.org/u/hfz determined by the double coincidence of wants [finding somebody who wants that size/cut etc] ... again the same as a DVD [think about regional codings fucking up the secondary mkt]. so the immense depreciation can only be explained by factors outside the depreciation of the product itself, i.e. debeers. [for the DVD contrast, compre the price of used DVDs to the amazon new price, for popular selections. not also the negative premium for non-USA region DVDs]. \_ The only reason diamonds cost so much is because everyone else wants them (because of advertisements that suggest bigger diamond== commitment), and there is a strict control of supply set by the diamond cartel. If diamonds were mined and sold in a completely free market the price would plummet to less than 1/10 of its current value right now. \- it's more complicated than debeers just pushing bigger diamonds. they push different trends based on what part of the stock they want to push. like going from large solitares to 3 smaller stones past/present/future rings because a large number of smaller diamonds came on line. read the home.lbl.gov link. \_ Episode from South Park: Kyle asks his dad for money to buy the latest and greatest Chinpokemon toy. His dad explains that it is a fad and he doesn't have to be a part of it. In fact he can make an even stronger statement by saying that he's an individual. Kyle responds "Yes I understand. Now let me tell you how it works in the real world. In the real world, I can either get a Chinpokomon, or I can be the only kid without one, which singles me out, and causes the other kids to make fun of me and kick my ass." Dad agrees and gives him money. My advice to you-- yes DeBeers is evil, but so are many corporations and cartels out there. Get the fucking diamond anyways. You seriously don't want to be an outcast or a weirdo and be ridiculed in the society, do you? \- this is why guys not in a bind and before The Ring becomes an issue should give Liberal girls a hard time about the acceptability of diamonds. look at furs ... nobody i know under at least 45 is expected to buy the wife a fur ... at least not in northern california. do any normal women under say 45 own +$5000 fur coats? ... i dont include people from texas or people who own +$1000 chihuahuas, but i do include people with multimillion dollars who clearly could afford it. even a ridculously expensive watch is better. in fact next time i see some women friends of mine, i'll have to bring it up. \_ Is there 10x the supply of diamonds that there is of, say, emeralds or rubies? \- De Beers bot controls the supply [by stockpiling \- De Beers both controls the supply [by stockpiling the production, as well as conrolling access to high high end stone to high high end jewelers] but also doesnt a lot of work on jewelers] but also does a lot of work on the demand side ... and i think what they do on the demand side is kinda sleazy. it's one thing to advertise something like car to an adult ... he should be able to control his spending urges. but in he case of diamonds for something like engagement rings, it puts the man in this weird position [as per the OP ... "will my inlaws think i am cheep"] and is in a sense not fighting fair. just like there is a sleaziness marketing say junk food to kids so they will cause a scene at the airport ... except this is more indsidious since at least society would back if not encourage the parent's right to fight the peopel advertising to their kids. a guys cant really himself bring up "dont be a de beers" to his fiancee. to his fiancee. i guess he could give her a copy of one of the "debeers expose" books ... [i consider it a good deed to talk about debeers with liberal fiancee's of friends] |
2006/10/31-11/1 [Politics/Domestic/California, Finance/Shopping] UID:45050 Activity:high |
10/31 10 part "Economics for the Citizen." (very basic) http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0503g.asp \_ My summary from reading the intro and the last paragraph-- there is a cost of doing something, and there is a cost of not doing something. In most cases one will be more costly than the others, but it is often not so clear which one is cheaper/costlier at the time that you needed to make a decision. \_ The long version (by Sowell) http://csua.org/u/hbx \_ The short version: "THE INVISIBLE HAND IS ALL-POWERFUL! LALALALALA!" \_ Let me guess, you like big government beauracracy and wastage? \_ Let me guess, you like knocking down straw men? \_ Fuck you talking 'bout? --Da Invisible Hand \_ He's a bit of a male chauvinist, isn't he? \_ You mean how he beliddles his wife, something else? |
2006/10/7-10 [Finance/Shopping] UID:44715 Activity:nil |
10/7 All the Tower Records will close. Liquidation and cheap items now. \_ how cheap? (how much is a typical CD album going for?) |
2006/7/11-18 [Finance/Shopping] UID:43634 Activity:nil |
7/11 Hi Im shopping for a new phone contract. I want a cool phone. I'm also cheap. What should I do? Are there cool stuff on Amazon? \_ 1. what do you mean by "cool?" do you want phone that looks good? ultra thin? or you want your phone dubbed as a mp3 player? PDA? do you want MMS? do you want download email, look up something on the web? and use your phone as a dial-up modem when no WIFI hotspot is available? 2. you said you are cheap. but you need to put things into perspective. Retail wise, a decent phone cost between $200-300. Cheap model cost about $100. You will not find anything significantly cheaper than $100 unless you are willing to go for TCL or Bird. Any decent PDA phone is going to cost you roughly the same as a cheap laptop. Bare that in mind, you can think about how much a carrier is willing to subsidize, you can come up with a reasonable budget for a phone. |
2006/5/9-10 [Politics/Foreign/Asia/China, Finance/Shopping] UID:42989 Activity:low |
5/9 Dear motd. Suppose a friend wants to maximize his wedding plans and would like to get the biggest bang for the bucks. He would like to invite as many people to the banquet as possible without losing too much money and without pissing people off. The only way to do so is by having the wedding back in Asia, which is not an option for him since most of his friends are in California. He's thinking about inviting as many close friends as possible so that red envelopes would recoup some of the costs, while minimizing the number of non-Asian people since they rarely give red envelopes. By the way I don't want to get into the whole topic of why many Americans we've met are so culturally insensitive, ignorant, careless, and rude that they give gifts instead of traditional auspicious red envelopes with amounts that at least recoup the cost of the wedding banquet. We especially want to avoid inviting non-Asians people who may unknowingly give really really cursed items like clocks, knives, and things that end up with the number four, or uneven number of things-- one more reason to not invite non-Asians. Anyways, depending on the quality of food and where he holds the banquet, each table is ~$500 for 10 people, and if he invites too many non-Asians he'll end up losing a lot of money and have bad luck. What's the best way to go about this? Is it ok to invite everyone to the vow thing and then exclude non-Asians to the banquet as to decrease bad luck and increase overall fortune of the year? Thanks so much for any advice. the year? Thanks so much for any advice. \_ This is clearly a simple optimization problem with several variables and a few unknown constants. We who study this problems cannot help because your unknown constants cannot be determined without the a certain about uncertainty (how odd), and perhaps a cultural anthropoligist. If offending your non-Asian friends costs you more money in terms of lost gifts than would be recouped by Red Envelopes, then you must avoid inviting Asians at all. Don't forget you could always sell the gifts on E-bay. The tricky part comes when analyzing the bad-luck gifts. Just how much income will you lose from dieing early if given a small clock vs. a large clock. This we cannot know. Now to be serious. Weddings are for your family and friends, not yourself you selfish bastard. certain about uncertainty (how odd), and perhaps a cultural anthropoligist. If offending your non-Asian friends costs you more money in terms of lost gifts than would be recouped by Red Envelopes, then you must avoid inviting Asians at all. Don't forget you could always sell the gifts on E-bay. The tricky part comes when analyzing the bad-luck gifts. Just how much income will you lose from dieing early if given a small clock vs. a large clock. This we cannot know. Now to be serious. Weddings are for your family and friends, not yourself you selfish bastard. \_ 80 column your ass, you inconsiderate bastard. \_ Your friend's mentality is completely fucked up and completely misinterperate the tradition. The way it suppose to work is actually rather simple. At the front of the benquet, there is typically a team of three or four that acted as account receivable. As soon as the guest give out the envelope, the account receivable will 1. OPEN THE ENVELOPE, COUNT THE MONEY HE/SHE GAVE, and 2. write down how much he/she gave out in the "income statement." Why keep such record? because when it's his/her turn to get married, you typically give the same amount back as SOCIAL NORM dictates. In other word. The tradition is designed to, effectively, lend the money to the new couples, when they need the money the most, and return the money to him/her when it's their turn to get married. The only exception to the rule is that you happened to have some rich friends and you happens to be poor. The tradition allow the wealthy to channel the funds to those in needs without having the recipein losing face. The social norm dictates that if you are out of town and have little chance to attend other's wedding, then, don't have such banquet. or says flat out in the invitation that red envelopes will NOT be accepted. and Yes, having such statement in the invitation is not as uncommon as you think. In short, stop being a cheap bastard in the name of tradition. kngharv \_ Hang on--this doesn't make sense. So let's say I'm single and I "lend" $100 to my newlywed friend in his time of greatest financial need as a wedding "gift". If I ever get married, according to your setup, he would simply be "repaying" me if he gave me $100 as a gift, not "lending" to me in my time of greatest financial need. How about, if you're going to give a cash gift, just look at it as just that, a gift? -John \_ You are right. It is cash gift. But there is an unspoken rule that when it's your turn to get married, he/she will also gives you the money in return. How he determine how much he is going to give you? he digs out the income statement and look at how much you gave the last time and start from there. There are a lot of factors involved and I was simplifying it to make a point. What are other factors? the place where he/she held banquet, for example. Normally we try to rough guess how much each head cost in a particular place and try to make sure the margin I made on my wedding is roughly the same margin he is going to make. There is no hard rule here. People is not going to hold anything against you if you forgot to factor in, for example, inflations. Because a wedding invitation == money. There is a phenomenon which you may find interesting. It is typically for a bride/ groom to have couple extra tables, and there will be people come to the banquet uninvited. The logic behind such uninvited guest is following:"you may think you and I don't know each other well enough for you to ask money for me, but I felt I am good enough friend for you and thus I will attend your banquet, give you my blessing and of course cash gift." fun? kngharv \_ Ok let's say I give $100 to my friend and 10 years passed and it's my turn to get married. Should he give me $100 plus inflation rate? Also what if I get married 10 times, is that fair? \_ If you get married 10 times, you need all the help you can get... \_ Don't invite these people to the wedding at all. Instead, hold a party for all your friends a few weeks afterwards (or whenever you're recovered from the wedding). It'll be much cheaper, they won't feel obligated to give you gifts you don't want, and everyone will probably have more fun anyway. \_ Yes but in the Chinese tradition, the more the merrier. \_ There are really two things at work here: a) you're a cheapass bastard, and b) you're a superstitious bastard. Why should the motd work for you if you're not going to do anything for the motd in return? \_ You should have listened to your mom: Study more and stop hanging around with those white folk. Bad for grades! \_ Now that I'm older, I know better :( Mommy says the whities I hang around with blow all their incomes on pleasure instead of real estate, do drugs, and don't study. I'm a bad son. -op \_ True (sad) story: I gave a set of really expensive knives as a wedding gift to one of my best friends. Within a year his wife had filed for divorce and shortly after that (before the divorce even went through) she died in a car accident. I am not superstitious, but lots of people told me knives are 'bad' gifts. I won't try that again. By the way, your post is a poor attempt at a troll. \_ Is your friend Chinese? Whether it's your fault or not, one thing is certain: the Chinese community gossips a lot, and most of them by now think that you're an yang chi idiot and will not invite you to their weddings. \_ Jesus H. Christ are really such an egotist that you think any of this bad luck had anything to do with what YOU bought as a wedding gift? \_ "I am not superstitious". No, I don't. However, when there are so many other gifts to give, I won't chance it. \_ "I'm not superstitious, I just won't step on cracks in the sidewalk." -tom \_ I did once and my mother's back broke. Why chance it? \_ The only reason I wouldn't give someone a knife as a wedding gift is think how bad I'd feel if there was a really bad fight and a spouse stabbed the other with the knife I bought. Don't give weapons as gifts. \_ Ditto above about the troll, but generally, a lot of us hairy barbarian gwailo gaijin types don't know about these superstitions, and I find it pretty interesting to learn this sort of stuff. Maybe include a little primer or something? Or would people find that condescending? And not to sound insensitive, but do you (pp) really blame the knives? -John \_ Red envelopes are very auspicious. But you can't just put in ANY money, you have to put in nice clean bills, as a sign of purity. The amount must be even number, and the term "double happiness" should be reflected. $22, $222, $2222 are extremely good. Also ba, the number 8 is VERY VERY good. $88, $888 are very good. Never, ever, give things that have 4 in them, because it is just one tone away from the word death. Wedding registry gifts-- they're ok if the Chinese guy is a total ignorant banana in which case anything goes, so better ask if the groom/bride are ABC bananas. NEVER, EVER give knives and clocks unless you want the gossipy Chinese community to hate you for the rest of your life. Clock is the same tone as "your demise", or "RIP". And BTW it's not uncommon to not invite whities to Chinese banquets because often they have exotic food that piss off foreigners, or that the foreigners start to become annoying and authoritative and ask silly questions about the food (you just don't question their culture, just accept it at the wedding ok?). So if you're a whitie and you're invited, you should feel proud of yourself for making it in the inner circle. Lastly the Chinese culture says if you have a vacation home in Santiago Chile you are obligated to offer them to use it any time they want. Ok that's all I've got for now. -Motd Culture Consultant #2 \_ Haha this is actually pretty good, thanks. As for "not inviting whiteys", I turned the "let's gross out the gaijin for fun" around on a whole Japanese restaurant in Tokyo once, where they all somehow felt honor-bound to choke down the live-fish-in-sake they served us just because I chugged them instead of making a face and sending them back. That'll show 'em, HAH. Anyway, I thought not inviting gwailos was just because we're funny looking and weird. So what would be kosher non-monetary gifts then? -John \_ So what if you give them four knives? Do they run away screaming? ;-) \_ This is very helpful. I kind of knew this stuff but my Chinese friends never actually explained it. Those assholes. They just let me infer it. So I'm gonna give them a set of 4 knives which each have a little digital clock in the handle. Actually, they probably wouldn't give a shit. So I'll send them to their mothers ;) \_ Yes. Most ABC bananas today don't give a shit. But their parents will probably have a heart attack. So, be nice. \_ I think John's hit this one on the nose. Turn this into an educational experience. If some westerners consider giving money too crass, then they shouldn't come. The point of a wedding is to celebrate your love, not their cultural comfort zone. Also, those red (or, in Japan, white) envelopes really help with the cost. --erikred \_ FYI, Japanese gives out red envelopes on weddings too. \_ have a wedding you can afford. Your guests aren't there to pay for your wedding you cheapass asian. -frugal asian \_ why don't you have two banquets, Eastern and Western style invite each guest to the appropriate one. \_ Best idea I've seen so far. Invite friends and family to the nice exclusive banquet with exotic gourmet shark fins, dog meat, intestines, liver, and bobas while excluding foreigners who may feel offended or grossed out. Then invite the white people over to your backyard for BBQ, cheap beer, and football. Great idea! \_ Gwailo not appreciate gourmet shark fin. All gwailo eat roast cow. And treat black people bad. -John \_ I had a Vietnamese/white wedding and my wife's family all gave red envelopes and my family all gave gifts from the registry. But we returned almost all the gifts and got store credit, which is almost as good. In white culture you are supposed to give a gift which is approximately the same value as the cost of your seat at the banquet plus wedding costs, so it is the same tradition, almost. -ausman \_ What the hell is "white culture"? Is that like yoghurt? -John \_ why the heck are you registering for items you don't want? I find these fundraising weddings to be really, rather crass. \_ I agree, and I think Miss Manners would dispute any inference that you are "supposed" to give any certain value of gift. If you attend the wedding, you're supposed to send a gift (not *bring* a gift, *send* a gift to the couple afterwards), and as with all gifts, the giver gets to decide how much to spend. -tom \_ http://tinyurl.com/z8t6t How are these numbers determined. I'm afraid that, as romantic as weddings may be, arriving at the appropriate value for a wedding gift tends to be based on cold, hard economics. If you are attending the wedding, you want to ensure that the value of your gift will cover the cost the hosts will incur by having you in attendance. Think in terms of the type and style of wedding, and where it will be held. What amount do you think will be required to cover the cost of your meal? Obviously, a cake and punch reception in the couple's back yard will cost less than a formal sit down meal in the city's swankiest skyline restaurant. Once you've estimated what it will cost to cover your meal, you'll want to add another "bonus" amount so they actually get a gift in the end, and don't simply recoup the cost of hosting you. Etiquette queens of days gone by would claim that guests should never have to consider the cost's of their host in determining what to give as a gift. True enough, you don't have to run these calculations, but a truly gracious guest is naturally inclined to do so, out of their genuine desire to treat the bride and groom, and to be generous on, what is to the couple a very special occasion. But there is also: http://tinyurl.com/zwcxs "Guests will choose a gift based on their budget and on how well they know you. They are not obligated to cover the cost of their meal and they should not even know how much you paid for your reception. To give out that information is considered bragging and has no bearing on what your guests will give." So I guess there are various schools of thought on this one. \_ I would not truest a website's advice on gift giving, especially one from a industry that profits from such. \_ We already have a house we had bought three years before, but lots of people coming to the wedding wanted to buy us gifts anyway. We had to come up with something. We found a few that we actually wanted, but mostly we wanted gift cards, but almost no one in my family gave that, because they have that save attitude as the anonymous flamer that it is really, rather crass. Is it better to have an attic full of stuff you don't want? I really don't see what the point of that is. But yeah, I didn't tell anyone I returned their gift. No point in that. The truth is, there is no "one size fits all cultures" answer to the question. -ausman \_ Until they come over to your house for Thanksgiving and wonder why you are dining on Ikeaware instead of the Limoges china you returned for a big screen TV. \_ If someone gives you Limoges china, why would you not use it? Unless it's butt-ugly, of course. -John \_ I know a lot of people who would say that the china is nice, but that they need x and that they can buy x (and probably y and z, too) if they return the china that they will use only twice per year. I think it's low class and tacky (plus, I *like* to break out the china unlike a lot of people) to return expensive gifts in favor of gift cards and that, I suppose, is my point. |
2006/3/16-18 [Recreation/Food, Finance/Shopping] UID:42275 Activity:high |
3/16 Do you tip in buffet restaurants? Aside from cabs and restaurants, where else do you tip? \_ Garbagemen, if they haul something unusual away. Also valets and bellhops/skycaps, obviously. Pizza delivery guys. Bartenders. \_ Garbagemen, if they haul something unusual away, valets, bellhops/skycaps, pizza delivery guys, bartenders, and strippers. \_ 5% in a buffet, if I feel generous. \_ My gf's family runs a restaurant and this is what she has to say. Some customers pay a lot and some don't. Those that pay more get special attention and get their food and drinks served faster and those that don't, well, her dad spits on their food. So, pay your fucking 20% tip if you want a clean meal. PS, I'm only joking. Seriously, she say they simply don't have the time or energy to keep track who pays how much tip and by law they have to treat EVERYONE with the same respect. She rarely remembers who pays more or less tip, but the more the better of course. In another word, NO ONE GIVES A SHIT. If you have the money and you have to ask, just fucking pay 20-30% and forget about it, and if you are tight on budget, don't pay. No one's gonna give you special treatment for overpaying or hunt you down and call you a cheap ass for underpaying tips. Shit. You're a fucking dumb ass. \_ yer gf's family runs a buffet restaurant? \_ yer gf's family runs a buffet or non-buffet restaurant? \_ When you go in to a restaurant and spend $500 you definitely get treated better than if you had spent $50. Part of the reason is that the servers know that they will probably (unless you're a bastard) get a much bigger tip in absolute terms, even if not in percentage terms. If you are a regular or if you truly appreciated the service, it makes sense to tip more as a percentage. My sister has been a GM at many fine restaurants (and was a server when in college) and you can bet that she remembers specific instances when someone was a cheap bastard or when someone was very generous. Sometimes she even had the same person as a client again and you bet it affected her attitude. However, this is more a case of getting stiffed after, say, a $1000 meal (or in one case a $10000 wedding party) rather than recalling if some schmoe tipped 15% or 20% after his once per year birthday dinner where he spends $50. --dim \_ Let's talk about the legality of tip, and put aside, for now issues related to ethics, common courtesy, manner, conventions. By law, how much must you tip? By law, can the provider give differential treatments based on how much tip you gave them in the past? Can you go to jail for not paying tips? Are you a law abiding citizen even if you never tipped? \_ $0, but I've never heard of a law about differential treatment based on tips, as long as you don't spit in their food, give slow service based on race, or things like that. \_ I don't think tips are expected there since you're supposed to service yourself there. I would expect that tips are appropriate where you can identify a specific indiviual who provided you a service and who isn't being paid directly by you. Taxi-cab driver, pizza delivery boy, and hairdesser are examples. \_ What if the hairdresser owns its own business, and you do pay it directly? \_ I have tipped a copy store employee who opened up the store for me a few minutes after closing to help me get fliers copied. I think you should tip any exceptional service, and shouldn't feel obligated to tip if you feel the service was bad. Everyone has to be paid minimum wage, if you don't feel the service was good you absolutely shouldn't tip. If the manager gets angry at you or or something for not tipping, tell him why you didn't. -mrauser \_ Servers do not have to be paid minimum wage, because it is expected that they will earn tips : http://www.opm.gov/oca/wage/minwage.asp \_ If for some reason they don't make enough in tips to cover min wage they have to get compensated up to minuimum wage. However if a server can't make minimum wage on tips they aren't going to last long. \_ How many of these threads do we need to have? If you have any social sense/grace at all, these questions are unnecessary. \_ I think these are useful. What if you haven't been tipping when it is the custom? \_ buffet? absolutely not. what prompt service did I insure? this whole tipping thing has gotten out of hand. \_ Do you tip for a haircut? I don't think that's for "prompt service". I hate that actually but I feel obligated. \_ I tip for haircuts. \_ Yes because I don't want my hair butchered the next time I go back. Will they ruin the buffet when they see me coming in the next time? I don't tip at retail clothing stores or at the post office or the water company either. \_ Tipping rules are based on how people are paid, not on whether or not it will ensure better service. http://tipping.org is the closest thing to a definitive reference that I've found. -tom \_ http://tipping.org? I haven't been there. Is that one of the sites inhabited by the waiters who say you should tip 15% even if they spit in your food and 25% or higher if they bother to refill your water glass? \_ No. But I see you have your mind made up already, based on nothing other than your own cheapness. -tom \_ You see what you want to see. I asked a question. Thanks for answering it. Bite me on the rest. \_ I've seen those sites too. I'm not cheap, but I don't think "15% as a BARE MINIMUM" is a policy I'm inclined to follow. \_ Then, yes, you are cheap. Waitstaff salaries are set based on a presumption of a 15% tip. (In the U.S.). Spending less than that is cheap and a breach of etiquette, no matter what the service was like. -tom \_ I'm with tom up to a point. It's also accepted that if the service was crap, 10% is reasonable. That's what I do. I assume the person is just having a bad day, even though I could be totally wrong. \_ And bad/rude service isn't a breach of etiquette? \_ Etiquette doesn't allow you to retaliate for breaches of etiquette. -tom retaliate for breaches of etiquette. Or rather, there is an etiquette to the ways you can retaliate. -tom \_ I'm also with Tom up to the point of "no matter what the service was like"--if a waiter gives you bad service, do not tip. I've been absolutely flabbergasted at some of the shit waiters expect people to put up with. -John \_ Thanks for answering my question. You can bite me on your bullshit opinion. You know nothing. \_ Hair butchered? think about that for a second. if they butcher your hair you won't go back. that is their \_ yes but I still have to wear it for 2+ weeks and people are stupid like that. \_ Well, at worst you could turn it into a buzz. And wear a hat. \_ A good hair salon can fix that, usually. -John incentive and that's what it should be. Why doesn't the post office let your mail get butchered unless you tip well? It kind of makes sense for services where \_ who would I tip? \_ All of 'em! Leave tips in your mailbox for the mailman, or else the mail is mysteriously in bad shape. Tip the guy at the counter, or else he might just forget about your mail for a few days, or take forever to do what you want. I dunno. \_ Missing the point. \_ the mailman? the guy at the counter? \_ you think if I tip the mm I'll get my packages delivered faster? does he not earn enough? a long time ago in a place far far away when the mailman went door to door and most people knew theirs by name my parents gave them christmas gifts and such but I've got a new one every day, they drive by in a jeep and all they deliver is junk mail anyway. :) \_ Heh. well, according to the hair-butchering theory, maybe the mailman should be losing and/or damaging and/or stealing yer mail... actually that reminds me, last year I had a package I absolutely needed the same day, but missed the mailman, so I drove around the neighborhood and eventually found the guy. It was the first time I'd talked to him ever, but he knew our house and we had a nice little chat. He was a little odd, but he's a postal employee so that was to be expected. Nice guy. I don't see why they shouldn't be getting stuff while others do. Then again my current mailman always delivers the previous tenant's mail even though I have a note there and always mark it to send back. K I'll stop rambling. \_ They shouldn't be getting tips (customarily) because their wages are not based on the presumption that they get tips. You can't use logic to figure it out; you can only learn the etiquette rules. -tom you probably never see the person again, like when you are travelling or in the city and getting service from various people for whom the anticipated tip is a good incentive. But for my regular haircut it feels stupid. Still do it of course. \_ Whores! \_ do you tip the cable guy when they install your broadband cable service? \_ I did for my satellite installer because the guy went way out of his way, giving me his personal cell # and coming back later that day to make up for the head office fucking up horribly. That wasn't about customary etiquette, that was just me saying "Thanks for not making me wait another week for them to reschedule you." -bz \_ I don't tip at places where I have to go to a counter to get my food or where I have to bus my own table. \_ what if they serve you drinks and clean your table after you leave? \_ If they serve drinks, I tip as I'm served (usually $1 per drink). \_ I used to tip at Souplantation and then I realized this was becoming weird. Then the price increased by a couple bucks. After googling a bit, I am going to go back to tipping $1-2, but the Asian folks I'm usually with never tip. the Asian grad students I'm usually with never tip. \_ "give what you can, without hurtin' yo'self" - old Telegraph beggar by Wells Fargo teller on Bancroft \_ Oh my God! It's been 10 years since I saw that guy. Last time I was in Berkeley I walked by that teller and thought of him, but he wasn't there. My friends and I still mention this guy from time to time. Hilarious to find him show up in MOTD! Thanks MOTD! BTW, I think it was: "Whatever you can spare without hurtin' yo'self." \_ I don't remember him. I remember "Pat" who smelled like piss and didn't say anything (and patted his head all day), that Starr fellow, the bucket-drumming guy, the little groups of street punks with, for example, mini suitcase locks in their nose, and the 3-card-monte guy who was an asshole and could get hostile. I think there was another black semi-hostile beggar/demander. \_ Do you remember RAR? \_ I believe that's "RAAAAARRRRR!!!!!!!!!!". |
2006/3/15-17 [Finance/Shopping] UID:42252 Activity:nil |
3/15 Is it just me or it seems like Costco American Express is getting stingier and stingier wrt the % of rebate back? It's eearily similar to the old days when Discover+Costco had good deals and then Discover got cheaper and cheaper till Costco dumped them. \_ It's still 3% for restaurants and 2% for travel, right? |
2006/3/15-16 [Health/Women, Finance/Shopping] UID:42247 Activity:moderate |
3/15 Suggestions for cheap storage space rental in the east bay? My requirements are... it exist. It can be on the 2nd floor, 3rd floor, i don't care. I don't need ground floor. I need to disappear for about a year. \_There is a super secure place on 3rd St. in Oakland near Jack London Square called Safe Keep or something. Not too cheap but much better than anything else I've seen. -scottyg \_ I'll tell you where NOT to go. That place on Shattuck just south of Dwight. Bad bad bad. I'm amazed my stuff didn't get stolen, the place is falling apart and has shitty security, the people who work there are thugs, and they're a ripoff. I shopped around a little before I found that place, and I tend to think that you want to be nowhere near the University if you don't want to get ripped off. If you're leaving the area anyway, why not put your stuff in a more rural/suburban location on the other side of the hills? \_ find a deserted field, dig a hole, and bury it. \_ Disappear? Storage space? Damn it, you're giving me Primer flashbacks. \_ That's next week. Or was it last week? \_ How big and how cheap? Storing stuff for a year can be pretty pricy. Like, up to $1000. \_ Disappear? Buy a bus ticket. Don't contact anyone you know or use the asme name. Use cash for everything. If you wrote a serious post you might have got a serious reply. \_ After I disappear I'm still going to troll tom anonymously. \_ Nice to know I have anonymous supporters. -dans \_ I'm asking for advice about finding inexpensive storage, not tips on how to disappear. Goddamn ADD nerds. \_ You asked stupidly, you got stupid answers. If you hadn't posted nonsense half your replies wouldn't have been garbage. Find a mirror, the rest of us are a-ok. \_ No he asked one specific question. You chose to answer a totally different one. If I asked "hey, my wife is pregnant where is a good place to get cheap baby supplies?" and you responded by telling me to make sure she takes her prenatal vitamins and sees a doctor it wouldn't be answering the question now would it? \_ I see it is anal retentive moron day on the motd. If he said, "Hey, my wife is pregnant where is a good place to get cheap baby supplies? I need to disappear for a year", it wouldn't be off topic to tell him how to hide. But you knew that. He was dumb, several people gave dumb replies. Tough. Being as retentive as you are why didn't you correct his grammar errors while you were here? And mine too? And spell check everything and erase anything over 80 columns? Why stop where you did? There is so much more to retain! go for it! \_ Err, why is it anal retentive to expect that the question asked is the one that will be answered? If you feel like ranting senselessly on motd -- hey, go for it: motd without senseless rants would be boring...but it's kind of pathetic to play the victim when you get dinged for being uselessly OT. \_ perhaps disappearing for a year might not have to do with hiding. perhaps it means leaving the area without taking any of his material possessions. \_ DING DING DING DING DING! \_ It's the ops politburo-given right to post poorly worded questions. It's ours to respond with snarky mis-answers. -dans \_ Look out for things like mold. I've known people who stuck stuff in storage for a year or so, forgot all about them till then and came back to find everything rotted. \_ Most of the lots of random bins at public auctions are from crap people have abandoned or 'forgot to pay their rent for' at storage facilities. |
2006/2/1-3 [Finance/Shopping] UID:41636 Activity:nil |
2/1 Where to buy relatively cheap DVDs? I tend to like Marimax type of semi-independent films... where can I get those for cheap? I live overseas most of the time, so, Netflix is out of question. I don't mind buying things used/previous viewed. \_ Where to learn English? (sorry, j/k) |
2005/11/11-14 [Reference/RealEstate, Finance/Shopping] UID:40553 Activity:nil |
11/11 Are mega apt complex->condo conversion units particularly bad to buy as homes or investments, even if you plan to own them for a while? I'm asking because single family homes are out of my price range. \_ Not particularly bad, but not as good as SFRs. Find a SFR, even if it means a city you don't like as well. \_ What if the city with the cheapest affordable SFR is over an hour drive away? What if the city where the condo is has a lot of amenities, like walkable markets, close to the beach, etc? \_ Why do you think you can't afford the SFRs if those are the amenities? Why do you think you *can* afford the condo? |
2005/11/11-12 [Finance/Shopping] UID:40543 Activity:nil |
11/11 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9555157/site/newsweek Reality check on the housing bubble-- no bubble. The fundamentals are strong, immigrants still find million dollar homes to be cheap, and wealthy boomers are finally tapping their money to buy 2nd and 3rd homes. This is the age of the new economy! lalalalala \_ Well, now that a Newsweek columnist says it, it must be truuuuue!!! |
2005/10/18-19 [Finance/Shopping] UID:40150 Activity:nil |
10/17 Can anyone recommend a cheap granite fabrication outfit for the South Bay? Thanks. (and/or supplier) \_ granite is very hard, and machining it requires even harder tools. such tools get warn down in the process and are quite expensive. \_ Wouldn't you prefer to go to Rome when it's nicer weather? -John \_ well, my usage of "cheap" here is of course relative. just throwing it out... this process is pretty annoying |
2005/7/28-31 [Politics/Domestic/California, Finance/Shopping] UID:38862 Activity:high |
7/28 How is the existing global domination of IKEA, who's founder surpasses Bill Gates as the richest man due to weakening US currency, differ from the American domination of Walmart? People boycott, protest, and say bad things about Walmart, but what about IKEA? \_ He's a lonely old miser who barely leaves the house (the IKEA guy.) That, and IKEA doesn't have the size 30 mumus next to the family tubs of cheap candy. I kid you not, I saw this in the first and only Wal-Mart I ever went into. It was as close to inferno as I ever hope to get. -John \_ It is not Walmart's size that is the problem. It is Walmart's behavior. -- ulysses \_ How is Walmart's aggressive behaviour any different from other super-mega American corporations' behaviours? \_ Stay on topic. IKEA != American corp. \_ Costco pays their employees a decent wage, Wal-Mart does not. Costco gives health benefits, Wal-Mart does not, dumping the cost onto the taxpayer. Costco allows unions to form, Wal-Mart does not.... should I go on??? \_ You guys just don't get it. This is like thinking a minimum wage actually helps the poor. -- ilyas \_ So, if there was no wage, and people could be paid $.20/hour, that would be better? \_ I think it would. The economy is a complex machine, but everybody wants to tinker with it, without an understanding of what tinkering will actually do, given the way the machine works. So if your original tinkering doesn't work, you tinker some more! The real art is to make a just society where people do the natural self-interested things. I could turn your own question on you: 'if the minimum wage was 20 dollars an hour, would that be better?' The real question is, why are there poor people in our economy? The poor aren't going to go away, regardless of what you do. -- ilyas \_ Your troll is barely amusing. The minimum wage should be set to whatever gives people in a given area a reasonable standard of living for a 40 hour work-week. Most poor people living on minimum wage are barely scraping by, and there are a lot of them. They are the ones using the emergency room, food stamps, etc. Why do you prefer big government programs to just plain companies compensating employees properly? \_ I don't prefer big government programs either. Legislating minimum wage increases unemployment, and fucks over the poor. Similarly for most measures forcing companies to spend more money on employees. -- ilyas \_ Do you think poor people should be allowed to be worked to death? Should the government let poor people starve? \_ As I mentioned in the conversation on this topic on irc, it's very difficult to starve in the United States. Mconst said that in Togo they say the US is a country where even the poor people are fat. -- ilyas \_ After 100 years of big government intervention in the economy, it is hard. It was not hard at the turn of the century. You want to bring us back to those days. \_ Yes, of course, you want to claim the cause of American prosperity was 100 years of attempts at socialism, whereas in reality America prospered in spite of, not because of it. I ve seen what actual socialism does, you haven't. -- ilyas \_ No, the cause of American prosperity is the combination of government, business, eductation and other efforts over the last 100 years. The ameliortion of the worst forms of poverty and abuses of capitalism were done because of the popular will, exercised through the political process. You are like the man that was bitten badly by a dog as a child and persists in believing that all dogs are evil. \_ No, I just saw the 'wall of cheese.' -- ilyas \_ But if the min wage is increased, then the wage required to get a "reasonable standard of living" (define pls) must increase. It creates unemployment and harms the ability to get a job of the very people who would most have trouble getting a better job. Instead of min wage you might as well do the zero unemployment economy thing and create taxpayer-subsidized "jobs". They do some of that in Europe. \_ Wal-Mart also gives health benefits. \_ Less than most companies: http://csua.org/u/cv2 \_ That's not what the claim above is. \_ Much of the Walmart hate stems not from the family founders being filthy rich (worth billions), but the fact they are so chincy in providing benefits to their employees. When you have over $22,000,000,000 why would 1) you force your workers to pay relatively high health care premiums, 2) hire illegal aliens, and 3) discriminate against female workers in pay and promotions. Those 3 thorny issues haven't plauged IKEA. In fact IKEA has been rated one of the 100 best places to work for in general and for working mothers. \_ And the worst part in all of this is that their huge size and power forces their competitors to do the same in order to stay in business, so now an entire sector of the economy is always low paying with shitty benefits. \_ Wal-Mart pays 50% of health insurance premiums. The industry standard is 75%. I read that it would reduce Wal-Mart's profits 20% in order to jump to a more standard 75%. Can they afford to do it? Of course. However, most companies aren't in business to give all profits back to the employees. In fact, I really detest Wal-Mart, but I can't think of anything unique about your points #1, #2, or #3. Wal-Mart is evil for other reasons, including the aggressive way it does business with suppliers and competitors. I don't know enough about IKEA to say if it is similar, but since it is an UltraMega corporation buying a lot of cheap product from Asia it probably has skeletons in its closet, too. \_ costco is holding its own against walmart, and it treats its employees well: http://csua.org/u/cut \_ I like Costco in that it doesn't provide plastic bags and that items only come in big sizes, both of which cut down wasted material which is good for the environment. Of course Costco does it for profit reasons, but I like its side-effect. \_ I find the big sizes wasteful. It's good if you have a large family, though. \_ purchase what you need and use up. eg. I don't touch their huge boxes of snacks i rarely eat. But, water, or fruit juice, I purchase plenty of. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/business/yourmoney/17costco.html?ex=1122696000&en=4cd5686772a804b6&ei=5070 \_ As a friend pointed out to me, Costco's return policy is the best. You can basically return anything anytime. If you don't like wal-mart, don't shop there. Tell people not to shop there. This is how a healthy economy works. Avoid government regulation as much as possible. \_ Yeah, my friends said they could buy a computer at Costco, and return it 1yr later saying that they didn't like it. I think that's insane to allow that. didn't like it. I think it's insane to allow that. \_ It's now 6 months on computer and computer eq. \_ Welcome to America, where the safety net blows so hard that you need to work to survive -- which is why America is so productive. Create a wealth gap (they earned it), it will keep 90% of America working like dogs to either make ends meet or keep up with the Jones's. I heard in Canada you can be productive and also get a lot of social services, and the wealth distribution is not as insane. Commies. \_ Yup, social services that includes cheap prescription drugs that Americans pick up the tab for. If they had to pay the real cost of medicine, their system would completely collapse instead of merely teeter on the edge as it does now. \_ Their economy is also mostly based on exporting raw materials. \_ Like beer? \_ Canadian cost of living is very high - higher than US. \_ You sure about that? \_ Factoring in taxation, yes. \_ Are you factoring in health care costs? \_ For quality health care or Canadian health care? \_ Depends. Do you want to survive an illness? \_ http://www.finfacts.com/costofliving3.htm http://www.2ontario.com/welcome/coca_701.asp Canadian cities are lower than American. Canadian cities are cheaper than American. \_ PWNT! \_ except for american goods! \_ 'Comparative cost of 200 items' is not cost of living. Canadians have less money to begin with because of the taxes. \_ You mean sales taxes? Because income taxes shouldn't really be part of the "cost of living"; they affect ability to gain income but not costs, seems like. \_ Income taxes are absolutely a part of the cost of living. How can you think it matters if the money came out of my check before I saw it or I had to pay extra for each item I purchase with that same money? You're trolling, right? IHBT. |
2005/7/12-13 [Finance/Shopping, Consumer/CellPhone] UID:38547 Activity:nil |
7/11 It was only 2 years ago when I had a $29.99/month wireless plan with 300 any time minute and unlimited incoming and night&wknd. My contract is up and I can't find a $29.99/month plan anymore. The cheapest I can find is $39.99 plus $7 tax, which jacks up the price to almost $50/month. Cell phones used to be cheap, what's going on??? \_ Last December I signed up for a T-mobile plan for two phones, five lines, everything free for one year after rebates. \_ Because cell phone companies know that after you have been hooked into having a cell phone, you can no longer live without out. At least your SO and friends will pressure you to always have one. That's why companies were willing to offer these money-losing plans. \_ Back then competition was hardcore and AT&T sold a lot of cheap contracts forcing others to follow. With buyouts, there isn't as much competition and those still in the biz have to make up the money lost making those before mentioned acquisitions. The best way to game the system now is to abuse the "friends and family" plans that allow unlimited time within their company . |
2005/2/15-17 [Health, Finance/Shopping] UID:36175 Activity:nil |
2/15 To the people that pay for their own individual health insurance plans, how much do you pay per month and how is your coverage? I'm looking for as cheap a plan as possible, but one which will still pay for well visits (regular checkups, etc.) This plan that I have now doesn't pay shit for checkups, and I want to find a new one. \_ I pay $43/month for Blue Cross's $3500-deductible plan. I pay all my health costs out of pocket, up to $3500/year; after that, they pay for everything. It's not what you were asking for, but for me it ends up being cheaper to pay for my own checkups and stuff than to get a real plan that would cover them. |
2004/12/16-17 [Finance/Shopping] UID:35332 Activity:nil |
12/16 Cheaper than Fleshlight: http://postarchives.entensity.net/040704/doityourself.wmv |
2004/6/6-7 [Finance/Shopping, Finance/Investment] UID:30638 Activity:insanely high |
6/5 70% tax unfair? My landlord inherited 21 tall rise buildings from his dad in Westwood. He does nothing except collecting $ and hiring other managers to take care of shit for him. There are plenty of apartments in Westwood but they're all overpriced because of the few elites who decide to artificially inflate the price. 70% tax unfair for the superwealthy people? My ass. The rich is getting richer and the poor is getting poorer, and that is a fact from having unrestrained capitalism. \_ Uhm, excuse me, sorry to interrupt your frothing, what what business is it of yours that he is the ceo and owner of his own little real estate empire? What the hell have *you* done to deserve a lower rent or free access to this guy's or anyone else's wealth? The rich are no richer than they ever were. The poor are better off now in this country than they ever were in any country at any point in history. If you don't want to make this guy even richer, then go invest in owning something, stop paying rent which was always a loser's game and take care of your own shit. How many apartments have you or some other trashy renter destroyed because 'hey, it's only a rental, fuck the landlord anyway, eh'? I'll bet you've left at least one apartment in much worse shape than you got it and then you bitched over every penny they took from your deposit to cover the damages. Hey, I know, let's have super strict rent control. It has worked soooo well in SF and Berkeley to make housing affordable and available to the little people. Not. \_ That's quite the rant. Are you saying that markets are perfect and that they never need adjustment? That we should allow the establishment of family fortunes that perpetuate a con- centration of economic power into the hands of an ever- wealthier elite? \_ The Founders of this nation were in favor of *not* allowing family fortunes to be broken up. They believed that passing family wealth to a single child was better than splitting it among them and destroying through division. Modern families have been ignoring their advice and splitting their wealth, thus in a few short generations destroying it so I'm not at all concerned about your Communism 120B Professor's propaganda about "the establishment of family fortunes taht perpetuate a concentration of economic power in the hands of an ever- wealthier elite" because reality shows this to be opposite to what you believe. Nice way to ignore just about everything I said, btw. If you're just here to be the new commie-troll, then congrats on your one success. If you actually believe this crap, then you can respond with more than phrases from the Little Red book and one line, no content blowoffs that the people responding to you are just ranting. I was talking about rent control and the land lord/renter relationship and all I got back was mindless off-topic propaganda. The least you could do is provide on-topic mindless propaganda if you want your troll to survive more than the next hour this time or 30 seconds next time. \_ IMHO(I'm not the guy above) the rental problem is partly the fault of assholes who do not participate in the market and so destroy it for everyone else. By this I mean perspective tenants with too much money and too little brains who don't bother to respond to price at all and break the rationality of the market. Just because someone can afford 2500/mo rent doesn't mean an apartment is really *worth* that, and they should keep shopping and spend the money they save on something else. I do not propose any governement based solution to this, but I believe that smashing the Real Estate cartel would go a long way towards fixing the problem. Again, I'm not proposing a government solution, just proposing that individuals refuse to use realtors' services when there is *any* alternative, and that people use the Internet as much as possible to replace them. This is already happening. I guess the one government based solution I might propose would be adding a course in the public schools that teaches about home ownership and home buying. It's fine to learn that stuff from your parents if they happen to be responsible and own a home but for the rest of us, learning in the real world is a pain. \_ advice #1, take your anti-depressant pill. advice #2, get your facts straight: http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agcomm/writing/newsrls/3-31-04a.htm http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/26/pf/taxes/wealth http://www3.sympatico.ca/truegrowth/richgetricher.html \_ *LAUGH* Read your own links. I stopped at the first after it agreed with me about half way down page 1. And here's the key phrase from *your* link, "Why such relatively fast income gains for the rich? In a word: education, one of the biggest income determinants. Workers with more education simply earn more." Which tells us that the only thing holding people back is their own unwillingness to get a better education. Education in this country is free or nearly so for the poor. There's \_ Only if you're smart. Dumbasses like Bush have family money, so they can go to increasingly expensive schools. However, bright, but not genius, poor kids are getting priced out. And there are a lot of other disadvantages to being born poor, such as crappy public schools which neither prepare you for nor steer you toward good 4-year degree programs. no excuse to not have at least a 4 year degree, yet if you keep digging deeper, you'll find (no big shock) that the bulk of the poorest of the poor didn't graduate highschool. Is that the fault of the rich? I'm sure you'll make some argument to that effect. \_ So... you just want his money, because he has more than you? Got it. \_ Actually, what this guy is saying, is that since this rich guy already has all these assets, he has an advantage in sqeezing more money out of the rest of us. It's like M$, market dominance leads to the ability to force people to pay what you want them to pay. Taxation seems like a reasonable way to me to keep wealth from turning into hereditary aristocracies dominating all wealth in the US. \_ bingo. there's clearly a point at which wealth goes beyond wealth. Billionaire empires would grow faster than the general economy and more and more power gets concentrated into the hands of a few. There's no injustice in putting huge taxes on inheritances and incomes that are beyond the pale. These are huge sums at just the tiniest top fraction of people. \_ So, I ask again, at what point do you put that 100% tax rate? How much is too much? How much are we 'allowed' to own in your little communist utopia? \_ What 100%? I merely defend the principle of progressive income tax, inheritance taxes, etc. Call it whatever you want, I don't give a shit. \_ We already have all that. Now what? It obviously isn't having the desired effect for you. When the tax rates were even higher the rich were still, you know, rich. The only way to make the highly driven and educated *not* be rich is a 100% tax. All that will do is drive them to another country with a realistic tax rate that allows them to be rewarded for being smarter than the rest of us. \_ So it's either black or white with you? Either we're free market capitalists or we're pinko commies? Way to use your noodle, dude. \_ I answer this above. When the tax rates were higher than now the rich were still rich. If you want them to not be rich the only way is to have a 100% rate. So, yes, I'm not only 'using my noodle' but I have correctly applied it to the communist point and spent the 2 seconds thought required to figure out the necessary tax rate to achieve the desired effect. \_ well, no, but I really think I could have better use of money than him. For example I could have bought 3 hybrid cars instead of his stupid Hummer. \_ Not true; the tax credit for rich Hummer owners is far more lucrative than anything you'll get in your battery rocket. \_ I really don't understand how this tax shelter still survives. \_ I really think I could have better use of money than you. Gimme all your money! \_ I'll be glad to! Just forward your bank account information to my business partner in Nigeria and I'll hook you up. \_ They are priced fairly. If they were not, then they would go unrented. \_ ah, and if by raising the Bay Bridge toll to $10 and you still get just as many bridge payers, then it is still priced fairly? Some things are called inelastic supply and and demand, my little cricket. \_ Yes because there are other options to cross the bridge. There is bart, car pooling, going around, or getting a job that doesn't require bridge crossing. If the bridge toll went to $10 and the same number of people continued to cross it then yes it is still priced fairly. If bridge use declines, as expected, but only slightly while BART use goes up then yes it is still priced fairly. \_ Housing isn't one of them. Move from Westwood and rents will be cheaper. My gf lived in Westwood because she liked it better than Mar Vista or Palms. She paid more for the privilege. She could've lived somewhere else cheaper. \_ There is inelastic supply and elastic supply. Over the long term, traffic patterns will definately change. I already cringe the few times I have to cross the GGB. I'd never go across it if they raised it to $10. -rollee \_ You would cross it at $50 if there was something worth more than $50 to you at the other end. \_ Also if one or a few landlords own most of the land in an area, monopoly or oligopoly effects prevent fair prices. \_ This is not true in Westwood. If you think it is overpriced then move to Santa Monica, Bel Air, Brentwood, WeHo, Inglewood, or wherever you think rents are fair. \_ Santa Monica is very very very expensive. Bel Air is mostly houses owned by the rich, and they hate students. Brentwood rarely rents out to students. Marina Del Ray rent is like NYC rent. Actually, Westwood is pretty cheap compared to these places I mentioned. Now, Inglewood, that's a much more affordable place. \_ Brentwood's not expensive if you know where to look. Same with Santa Monica. -- ilyas \_ Isn't Santa Monica still under rent control? --rollee \_ Don't know. Santa Monica is like "Berkeley South" in most respects. -- ilyas Do you have a car? Have you driven to Santa Monica, say, -/ near the beach? Have you shopped around? Rent there is $100-$200 more than Westwood for studios and 1 bdrms. If SM were indeed cheaper, there would be more students living there, but the fact of the matter is that SM residents are mostly young fresh grad, 20-30 something. A better parallel is that SM is more like Emeryville. \_ So what you're saying is the Westwood rents are still quite fair since they're cheaper than anything else around. Thanks for clarifying. \_ As an aside, one good argument I've heard for high taxes is that money corrupts the democratic process. So keeping people from amassing large amounts of wealth is important to provide each person an equal voice. You may argue that the solution to the problem of money in government could be solved by anti-corruption laws, but history seems to show otherwise. For example, look at all the corporations contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to throw parties for politicians at the convention in Boston. I think Kennedey has a party with a price tag > $100K paid for by companies with bills pending before his committee. \_ There will always be enough money around to corrupt politics. You can't fight human nature with tax laws. Having a super high tax for the purpose of avoid political corruption by sucking the life out of people seems silly to me. It's as if you're saying most rich people do nothing with their wealth but buy politicians which oh nevermind, it's just silly. \_ I respectfully disagree. The few elites know how to allocate wealth better than the poor. I'd rather have the rich people control money so that they can contribute to the Ghetty Museum, Metropolitan Opera, Gates Hall, Rockefeller Funding, Carneghie Scholarships, and things. If you had allocated the same amount of money to the poor, they'd squander it on alcohol, plasma TV and football fields. \_ yeah, but who'd build the plasma TV's, the football fields, and the distillerys? \_ You're all a bunch of fucking communists. Go find a time machine and move to the Soviet Union. \_ Haven't you guys followed the stock market and financial news? Haven't you seen news about Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, LTCM bailout, Stern's market timing, etc.? You don't think those are just the tip of the iceberg? Wake up! They are raping your arse, and you are saying "thank you! it's lovely! do it again!" And the idiots above are saying, "Hey! don't worry, some day you can get rich too and join us in screwing little people." \_ It's the great American hesitation: wait, if I make it hard for rich people to screw the little guy, then how will I screw the little guy when I win the lottery? Keep them hoping, and they'll do their best to stay out of trouble and maintain the status quo. |
2004/4/28 [Finance/Shopping] UID:13433 Activity:moderate |
4/28 Has anyone purchased diamonds online? I just went through amazon's configurator and a platinum setting was $1500 cheaper than a 14k or 18k gold setting. Seems really odd. Also about $2k cheaper than bluenile. \_ The setting itself shouldn't cost more than about $2K at most, and that is with (little) diamonds on it. How can it be $1500 cheaper with the same center stone? Did one setting have better/larger diamonds than the other? With no other stones the setting will be < $1000, even in platinum. |
2004/3/19-21 [Finance/Shopping] UID:12762 Activity:nil |
3/19 What is a cheap and secure way to check my credit report? \_ I think you are entitled to a free credit check every so often. \_ you are entitled to a free check after you are denied credit. also, sometimes some company will give away free credit checks. usually the "deals" type sites will let you know when that happens. \_ once a year, I think...? \_ where and how to get it? I often get marketing calls and mails that offer to check my credit for $ >> 0. \_ Well there is always 'freecreditreport.com' but they will also try to sell you a service based on monitoring your credit erport. |
2004/2/18-24 [Finance/Investment, Finance/Shopping] UID:12295 Activity:nil |
2/18 Immediate position open for Sr. Systems Engineer (sysadmin) at http://Walmart.com. If you meet the criteria, please e-mail me. We've been getting weak resumes from our less-than-technical recruiter. /csua/pub/jobs/walmart.com -- Marco \_ Walmart? I'd rather be a janitor at MSFT. \_ MSFT is far more evil than Walmart. \_ awww...all that sysadmin talk's gone??? \_ maybe people should start a new thread when they think of some cool entertaining flame war related to a job post. That will be less likely to be censored and won't provide a disincentive for alums to post jobs. \_ jealousy. \_ all that salary talk probably made it harder to find a schmuc^H^H^H^H^H^Hqualified candidate. \_ Do you know the general pay range for this? 60-80, 80-100, 100+? \_ Our rates are very competitive. Conservatively, I expect a qualified candidate would easily clear $80K. -- Marco \_ How about employee discounts at Wal-Mart stores? \_ More importantly, how about stock options? \_ Is this really considered competitive for a senior person? It looks average, or even a bit below, to me. \_ It's quite low. Senior Sysadmins should clear 100k at any company. Mid level people make into the 90s. 80k is certainly not competitive. A few weeks ago I turned down 110k and another company I'm currently talking with will be offering me 110k plus other benefits that will make it worth it to give up my current 120k. At 80k I wouldn't even consider applying or telling my friends about it if they were senior level. Then again, so few sysadmins survive more than 3-5 years that anyone who hits the 5 year mark is considered senior even though they're only just becoming useful at that point. It's a strange world we live in. I've always wondered what happened to the ones who didn't survive. I suppose they become developers? --15+ years SA \_ These numbers are too high for anywhere outside of Silicon Valley. Also, 15+ yrs. is a huge amount of experience and would increase your salary over most. http://sageweb.sage.org/jobs/salary_survey \_ If you need five years to become a good sysadmin then you must be pretty dumb. Sysadmin is a support function, if you design your netopology correctly your day-to-day is basically just monitoring and replacing defects. Once a month or so you'll need to add in more storage or add in a couple more machines. Again, if you designed your netop correctly this is a piece of cake. Backups are relatively easy nowadays with the right RAID. I mean seriously, I sysadmin EDA software, which is a bitch, and it didn't take me five years to "become useful." \_ Sorry, you are just wrong. There are some things you can only learn by working on a wide variety of systems. Also, all the senior level jobs include at least some management. require at least some management. -SA with 10 yrs exp \_ I sense a dick-waving contest coming on... \_ "They've got bigger dicks? BOMB THEM!" --GC \_ Someone has to fix the cash registers. \_ He said "conservatively" and "easily" \_ Marco, thank you for posting this. No one should ever be attacked for posting a job on the motd. I never understood the suicidal "I'm too good for your stinking job!" attitude so many motd idiots have towards alums posting jobs. This is part of what is called "networking", you clods. It's *the* best way to find a new or better job. \_ I'm talking about a very well paying job doing real systems work at one of the world's largest ecommerce operations. If all of the stuff below disturbs you, by all means, do not send me your resume. If you want a good job; please let me know. -- Marco \_ Some people have ethical problems with Walmart. Some are just fucking with you, and some might want the job. \_ That's because sysadmins charge more than $6.80/hr. \_ in the grand scheme of things when you consider which companies stand to totally destroy the lower middle class and lower class income brackets, Walmart is completely satanic and threatens to lower the quality of life of millions Americans directly and indirectly. You can say that that's just the effect of the free market, and I would happen to agree with you, but it does not make it suck less. This brings up the question of if I were completely down on my luck and I was offered a job with something that I consider Evil(tm), such as Walmart/Microsoft/Halliburton/ Archer Daniels Richland or whatever that ethanol leech behomoth corporation is named, if I would take it. I'm not sure. \_ If you are talking about Walmart squeezing out smaller companies and offering the newly unemployed low-wage, non-unionized jobs with few/no health benefits -- you have a point, but please be more specific next time. \_ Not that we don't appreciate the job posting, but which is more evil Walmart or Microsoft? \_ Is that a joke? I'd say that Microsoft is Evil, they way I might say an American politician is evil, even though even the worst American politician is better than Kim Jung Il, and even the worst software company is better than Walmart. \_ They're evil for different reasons. Plus as a sysadmin you'd be more directly helping MS be evil. \_ There are people who will argue whether the flames are blue or green, when the point is that their arse is on fire. \_ Walmart isn't Evil. They can't be evil. They sell Linux and Linux isn't Evil is it? \_ They sell Windows too. \_ Walmart significantly increased the standard of living of the (under)employed. According to http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1713.cfm the "poor" enjoys a lot of amenities in life. In fact they would be considered middle class or even upper class in coutries that you are so worried about taking our jobs away. What makes this possible is the low prices introduced by stores like Walmart. I don't have any love for walmart, but during the time I was employed, I got everything from walmart and it kept my expense down and finance afloat. Most of the people who trashes walmart are those too rich to know the need of the low income Americans. \_ that is interesting and i value your opinion, but could you find more evidence of this not coming from an incredibly right wing think tank like the Heritage Foundation? I happen to be from one of those little towns that Wal-Mart has indirectly completely devestated. You can probably say "that's because of cheap labor available from China, quit whining." and once again I agree but it still sucks. I think there is a direct temporary short term benefit, like as you said when you're poor it's pretty awesome and convenient to be able to go to walmart and clothe yourself almost completely for under $30, but in the long term the presence of a walmart directly depresses or destroys the possibility of any local retail jobs that have any chance of offering a liveable wage. Maybe everyone in America needs to retrain immediately for jobs in the New Economy. I have not read of any evidence that the current or even past presidential administrations actively care or are offering any leadership in this area. \_ Bush's job training program is "be a Halliburton contractor in the front lines in Iraq so when you get shot and killed we can NOT REPORT it because you were a civilian non existent contractor but since you don't go in the 'troops killed' column, we don't have to tell anyone and the american public doesn't and won't care. [reformatted - formatd] \_ Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, etc weren't exactly great job creation plans. People die in war zones, shit happens. They get hazard pay. Also to endlessly argue that the very poor in this country are much better off than say arsenic poisoned homeless dudes in Bangladesh or entire generations of people who live in garbage dumps in Manila and never see solid land is a circular argument, it's not going to win me over. \_ Whatever you think of its source and author, you should consider its facts and arguments in their own rights. The data that article cites comes from US govt reports. See the article and its references. And let me just quote "The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)" \_ Living space != standard of living. If it did, we'd be sending food and blankets to the Japanese. \_ It's part of the whole picture. And the average japanese are miserable in that regard. \_ does living space automatically equate to a higher standard of living? Mongolian steppe herders probably have spaces the size of Delaware all to themselves. \_ see above, and your comparison is not valid. You know how much tent space per person they have? \_ I don't think living density in this country is going to approach japanese or european or southeast asian or chinese levels any time soon unless we suddenly run out of oil, we have pretty hard to overcome urban sprawl problems, that ironically walmart has exploited very successfully. \_ Japan: 127,214,499 ppl in 374,744 sq km. USA: 290,342,554 ppl in 9,158,960 sq km Or roughly half as many people in 1/24th the space. The US will never achieve this level of pop density. \_ does the above include (or exclude?) areas of the US you're not going to live in, like national parks or volcanoes or the sides of mountains or Houston? \_ Of course, as well as huge chunks of Hokkaido and numerous inhospitable rocks in dispute with Russia. \_ None may enter the sacred forests of Hokkaido, reknowned for their countless soap factories. \_ So why support a company that makes billions by rapidly furthering us towards a great equalization of global poor people by lowering the standard of living of poor people in the US to India's poor? Is that how globalization is supposed to work? Great! Actually no one is really saying how much they love Walmart, and I bet they just pave over all the poor people at Marco's work and he has little concept of it and is probably a nice guy. I know a couple of people who work at Chevron-Texaco and they had absolutely NO IDEA why people would keep 'blocking the main road to campus' or protesting or giving them mean looks when they went to work in San Ramon. I mean, come on, they have college degrees from UCB but they choose to be really stupid. I answer their evite party invites with NO BLOOD FOR OIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! \_ Well, Walmart sells cheap stuff. \_ Now you see many of the so called "liberals" are haters. \_ what is this "so called" stuff? I AM a liberal and damn fucking proud of it, ok not proud enough to sign my name today, check back later. I notice none of today's posters are sufficiently walmart loving or frothing at the mouth, what happened to free market guy? or free republic guy? on vacation? \_ And what about Chicom troll? You'd think cct would have a (painfully incoherent) opinion about all of this. \_ Has it occurred to you that Marco's giving a "conservative estimate," such that he sets an appropriate expectation, and such that he isn't brokering a salary negotiation? I'm pretty sure http://Walmart.com will pay market for you superstars out there. --chris \_ I said "average" or "below". |
2004/2/10 [Finance/Shopping, Computer/SW/SpamAssassin] UID:12185 Activity:kinda low |
2/9 I'm planning to go to New Zealand at the very end of December. Can you recommend a local (Bay Area) travel agency? \_ Why bother with a travel agency? I've never understood this. \_ They can often get you better fares since they have allocations of cheap tickets long after you cannot buy them retail. \_ Good luck getting cheap tickets to new zealand for the end of December. \_ I got good prices from Air New Zealand's web site for my Nov. trip. Dec is more, but you should at least try there and make sure you can't get the ticks there cheaper than through an agent. But they do kinda spam the address I gave them. -crebbs \_ ANZ has a $999 roundtrip special running until Nov. to celebrate adding SFO to their route, but no specials after that. I'll keep an eye on them, though, thank you. --OP \_ Don't forget to bring your ozone layer. \_ At least I don't have to bring my own Hobbit clothing: link:csua.org/u/5xe (jpg) |
2004/1/6 [Recreation/Food, Finance/Shopping] UID:11688 Activity:very high |
1/6 How much can i expect to pay for a cheap lunch in london? \- Ask for Cheep Bubble and Squeak --psb \_ Cheap: 3-4 pounds. Decent (primarily Indian or Kebab): 5-10 pounds. Or you can grab a sandwich for about 1-3. There's some pretty mangy food there, though. -John \_ i don't know why this was overwritten, but thank you thank you thank you! my faith in the motd is restored! \_ What? WTF? Walk into a cheap looking place and read the menu. \_ dumbass, I'm not in london right now. That's why I'm asking. I need to estimate my travel expenses for a trip in the *future* not the present. \_ Useless. You can't estimate to the penny what it will cost you. It will *always* be higher than you expect. It's a first world nation. Prices will be similar. \_ head...hurting...idiocy...aghck!!! \_ Sorry if it was so hard to figure out that a McNugget here will cost about the same as a McNugget there. \_ I think McNuggets are a little more expensive there because of how the dollar has been sliding. \_ If you know where to go, about 3 quid. \_ thanks, but since I have no idea where to go, can I assume 5-10 per meal? I'm looking for a ballpark estimate assuming both frugality and ignorance. \_ Go to http://timeout.com Yes, you'll have to register for a freebie trial, but trust me, this is _the_ mag to have access to. \_ so why are you making a trip to london when you are tight on money? \_ jesus fucking christ you people are amazing. I'm not tight on money, and I'm not paying for it anyway. I just have to sketch out a rough budget for the trip, and like to save money on general principle. \_ London on the whole is terriffically expensive. For good food you generally can't go wrong with Indian or Bangladeshi--you'll want to hit Brick Lane in any case. There is _no_ decent food in the City/financial area. -John |
2004/1/5 [Finance/Shopping] UID:11660 Activity:nil |
1/4 I'm moving. I need a lot of bubble wrap. I live in the South Bay. Can anyone recommend an economical local source for buying packing materials in quantity? \_ I just use old newspaper. \_ UHaul...it's kinda expensive to buy a lot, but at least you'll now know a guaranteed place to get some. \_ ebay? old newspaper as the person above suggested? Old recycled papers? UPS store? Office Depot? Office Max? \_ uline or u-line. I remember it was definitely cheaper than uhaul. |
2003/11/1-2 [Reference/RealEstate, Finance/Shopping, Politics/Foreign/Asia/Others] UID:10896 Activity:kinda low |
10/31 Oh great. A Vietnamese man just bought my building and has now cancelled the property management firm, the cleaning contract, and the pest control contract. He claims he can do it all himself. There are 19 units and over 30 people in the building. This is stupid - 5 years ago they finally beat back the roach invasion and now this chump is going to let them back in? Why is he so cheap?! \_ why do you still live in the Bay Area?! \_ Where do you live? And who do you work for? \_ Vietnamese people are always cheap. They are your worst nightmare as your employee (stupid) and your landlord (cheap). They're also your worst roomates (dirty). I'm speaking from personal experience. Do yourself a favor and move out ASAP. \_ I've got 7 months left on my lease. ARGH! \_ You can break lease and move now or wait and pay double in 7 months after the economy improves. Or you could kill him. \_ um, how are we vietnamese dirty? \_ heh, you'll accept stupid and cheap but dirty isn't ok? \_ ha that's pretty funny. Anyways, how come Vietcongese bashing is ok but black/white/jews bashing gets trashed by motd custodians? Is it because our custodians don't like Viets as well? \_ No, b/w/j bashing mostly causes the flamefest intended by the trolls posting. When that section of the motd grows to 5 pages, it gets deleted. \_ Edit it yourself. I like Vietnamese so well I married one, I just don't see the need to censor idiots. It is better to let the world see how stupid the bigots really are. \_ sheesh, what a bigot! \_ Property management firms ... snicker. Those are usually run by lazy, incompetent know-nothing do-nothing english major suit-wearing money-grabbers who think they are entitled to a high fee without providing any service. Of course he should fire them and cut some fat. Helps the economy, if nothing else. \_ I have yet to see an exception to the rule you state. \_ personal experience: management company did what was needed to be done at my apartment complex. it was very industrial and there was no personal touch to anything but stuff got done. i moved from there to another complex run by the one-owner-guy and it was a big fucking filthy broken mess and a fire hazard to boot! i'll take a prop. management firm anyday. \_ I think you mean "industrious." \_ no, I mean industrial. exactly like I said. thanks. \_ At least your landlord wasn't the Lucky Reddy dude who bring indian peasant girls to the country to serve as sex slave and to help clean the apartment buildings. \_ If you're not an Indian peasant girl what do you care? |
2003/8/19-22 [Finance/Shopping] UID:29386 Activity:low |
8/18 hi are you going to burning man? would you like to buy a bunch of talkabout radios from me for very very cheap? let me know. - danh \_ can't you buy new walkie talkies at radio shack now for about five bucks? are you offering them cheaper than that? \_ I didn't see your mom for sale at radio shack this time \_ Ok Ill buy them. |
2003/1/20-21 [Finance/Shopping, Finance/Investment] UID:27157 Activity:high |
1/20 I've seen on a PBS program (forgot which) which talks about the netherlands being a "post-consumerism" society. Are there other examples of such countries? New Zealand? Thanks. \_ i don't think whole nations are "post-consumer" but there are sub-groups in some of them. http://uk.geocities.com/balihar_sanghera/Globaltersoc.html \_ What exactly does "post consumerism" mean? They don't eat or have any needs any more? Have they invented the star trek food maker thingy and didn't tell the rest of us? What? \_ It means living to satisfy our needs, and not our wants. You don't NEED a SUV, DVD player, Sony playstation, or a new computer every 18 months. So why do you buy it? Deriving satisfaction in life based how much crap you can buy with money is meaningless and not sustainable. In one word: Simplicity. \_ So you mean to tell us that people in the netherlands are at one with the land and don't own stuff? Okey dokey. Whatever. As someone who owns almost no consumer junk myself, I think you're a wack. There's nothing wrong with all those things if you can afford it. Let's just shut down the whole fucking economy and eat only after a creature or plant has died a simple natural death. While we're at it let's have 80% unemployment when there's nothing for most to do and no incentive for the other 20%. This sounds just great! Where's Walden Pond when you need it? \_ You need a cactus up your ass. \_ Sounds like a communist society. \_ actually, sounds more like poor. but that's not so different from communism, i guess. |
2002/9/13-14 [Finance/Shopping, Finance/Investment] UID:25879 Activity:nil |
9/13 http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1325469 sobering thoughts. prepare thyself accordingly. \_ They don't go nearly far enough into the alarming consequences of deflation. Basically deflation kills most demand. Everyone wants to hold onto his cash so he can get what he wants for less. |
2002/7/5 [Industry/Jobs, Finance/Shopping] UID:25283 Activity:very high |
7/4 Just graduated, and the money situation is ok. So I'm thinking of just taking a little time off and relaxing at the folks house for a little while or until the economy picks up (not that I have a choice). (related to below post) What are some good (possibly open- source) projects I can dedicate some time to? And what are the best ways to get started on these kinds of things? \_ Art is good. Pick a medium and take a class. If you really like it you'll get better. Pick a form which takes a lot of time and organizational skill to thin your competition. Or enslave yourself to my film crew for extra cool points. We always have openings, and it's not pr0n. -brain \_ Mistake. Any "holes" in your resume will raise questions when you finally do decide to join the economy. And btw, it might be years before it picks up again. Say hi to yermom for me. (sorry, I had to take the cheap shot, it was so there). \_ is saying, "I spent the last year working on open source projects" that bad? \_ Depends on how you say it. You make it seem that you took the time off for a "good" reason. If it's shareware, make it something that has a public release. If it's 3-6 months off, it's acceptable to say you took time off to celebrate graduation. \_ I'm doing this (sort-of) right now; working on a part-time contract, setting up our apartment. The hardest thing is to get used to relaxing and not feeling guilty about not working full-time. I suggest taking some certification exams, since it's \_ i did have to explain where i was for a year. I said, "Peace corps." even "Missionary work in Sierra Leon" works. probably nice weather outside to go prepare with a book in the park. Get a ton of exercise, tank up on sun (unless you're in SF), and buy an old laptop to go work away from home on stuff you feel like--otherwise you just end up sitting around at home and pr0n- hosing. -John \_ i did have to explain where i was for a year. I said, "Peace corps." even "Missionary work in Sierra Leon" works. |
2002/6/14 [Finance/Shopping] UID:25101 Activity:nil |
6/13 Mailing lotsa books to France (10 pounds?). Is USPS cheaper or UPS? \- bookrate is relly cheap! ... at least USA. You should pack the stuff pretty well however. For international stuff, I belive printer matter is also cheaper than letter type stuff. I once sent an associate in london a poster and it would have been a hell of a lot more expensive if i had put a letter in the "london tube" \_ why send them 10 lbs of books when you can send them 10 lbs of plastique? \_ there must be something with a better boom/weight ratio than plastique these days. |
2002/3/27 [Finance/Shopping] UID:24242 Activity:nil |
3/26 Wanna buy an island? http://www.vladi-private-islands.de/sales_islands/sites/pricelist.html \_ there are much cheaper island buying options, depending on where you are. i know a retired electrician who owns an island in alaska, and i'm pretty sure he's not that rich. \_ Well, the islands in Nova Scotia seem to be pretty cheap. The cheapest one is $19,000 US. That's about the price of a car. \_ Thanks for clarifying. \_ What would you do with a $19K island in Nova Scotia? \_ How many hours per day is it above sea level? |
2002/2/25 [Finance/Shopping] UID:23967 Activity:high |
2/25 Where's the best place to get bulk vitamins? I need some calcium and iron supplements and don't want to spend a lot - soda gal \_ Adjust your diet. It's easier and cheaper. \_ Women need extra calcium and iron supplements because of their monthly..."grumpiness." Actually, most athletes should take supplements as well, or eat a whole lot of everything. Try Costco for the vitamins. \_ Grumpiness? Only in this country. It's cultural. And it's ok to call it a 'period'. \_ Agreed. The supplement stuff in Costco seems pretty cheap compared to other stores. \_ Trader Joe's has good prices if you're not looking for anything overly exotic. \_ definitely second tj for cheap vitamins. \_ Eat dirt and rocks. \_ And suck nails. |
2002/2/2 [Finance/Shopping] UID:23752 Activity:low |
2/1 Where can I get a used stereo receiver? Craigslist seems to be a poor choice on this one. Anyone willing to sell me theirs cheap? \_ email? \_ how cheap? \_ $25 ? |
2002/1/18-21 [Finance/Shopping] UID:23599 Activity:moderate |
1/18 Any recommendations for another product like http://www.spiderplant.com/hlt/index.html a cheap flexible room temperature monitor? They aren't taking more orders. thanks. \_ Me too, I need something similar to HLT. -- Marco \_ What do you want it for? If it's for a machine room then your routers might already have a temp. value you can retrieve with SNMP. |
2001/8/13 [Finance/Shopping] UID:22089 Activity:kinda low |
8/13 What's the cheapest long distance carrier to use, if you know exactly who you are going to call long distance? \_ the one with the cheapest rates (and monthly) for that person. -duh |
2001/7/2 [Finance/Shopping] UID:21699 Activity:very high |
7/2 From http://moneycentral.msn.com/articles/smartbuy/basics/6600.asp?package=moneymonday "Alfred and Trish moved from Queens, N.Y., to San Diego this year. Housing is slightly cheaper, but property crime is higher." Isn't Queens, NY a very bad neighborhood? I can't imagine San Diego being worse than Queens. \_ Queens is very ethnic. There are, of course, parts that are bad, but for the most part, it's not. \_ tons of people live in queens. that's like saying "the bay area is a very bad neighborhood" \_ I see. I've never been to Queens. Based on the impression I got from movies I thought it was just a small district in NY with many bad people. \_ nyc has 5 buroughs. each burough has nearly a million people, and in the case of brooklyn, nearly 2 million people. so statements like "all queens is bad" is really broad, there are hundreds of different neighborhoods in nyc, some bad, some good. neighborhoods you only know about from rap songs are probably bad. \_ Depends on where in San Diego they moved. If housing is slightly cheaper then it's not one of the best parts of San Diego. --dim \_ New York city has gotten significantly better in the last five or ten years, and this goes for both Manhattan and the other burroughs. \_ Thanks to the NYPD's shoot first, ask questions later policy \_ Isn' it plunge first, ask questions later? \_ No problem with that. Population control! \_ anyway it's better than a situation where the police tell someone to stop or they'll shoot, the person doesn't, and the police don't shoot. \_ you can really hurt a guy with a pager if you put your mind to it \_ Actually, the improvements predate Guliani's arrival in office, which is when the police started to get really bad. \_ I'm sure it has to do with the good economy. LA didn't have near as many gang problems for many years, too, but now it's getting worse as the economy is slowing. --dim |
2001/5/10 [Finance/Shopping] UID:21226 Activity:kinda low |
5/9 Anyone have any opinions on video projectors? I need to buy one and cost is an issue. I've only ever used the fancy, schamncy ones that cost over $5k. In particular, are the cheaper Infocus models any good? -payam \_ used a cheaper-end Infocus machine to display the Boston Aquarium cam on the wall of our office for a while: worked fine, easy to set up, power cable pretty much interchangeable with that of any number of office machines-- doesn't handle resolutions above 800x600 too well |
2001/2/14-15 [Finance/Shopping, Finance/Investment] UID:20596 Activity:insanely high |
2/14 Got no date? Want something more than another valentines day staring at source code? Come see: "Hungry for Profit" Wednesday, February 14th @ 7pm 210 Wheeler come and learn how * U$ agricultural interests abroad destroy 3rd world nat'l economies * Agribusiness perpetuates environmental degredation * Imperialism keeps millions of people on the brink of starvation to benefit the First World \_ Going vegan can help solve the problem. http://www.vegan.org/about_vegan_environment.html (especially the last section) \_ Uh, how? Vegans eat vegitables that require farming which contributes to environmental collapse. You should switch to starvation and dieting like super models. \_ Raising cattle or poultry also requires farming and environmental collapse. For every calorie of meat you produce requires you to put in 1000 calories to feed and raise that animal. \_ Glad I'm a vegitarian and not contributing to the \_ Commie alert collapse of the "environment". Not that I give a shit about it. \_ It doesn't solve the problem completely but it helps solve the problem by slowing down collapse. \_ All this collapse is bullshit. You sound like Al Bore or Jimmy Carter. Americans should not be limited to small dreams. BTW, I'm vegitarian by choice, and not because I'm concerned with the "planet" and the "future". \_ Typical sodan thinking. Well, you just keep that to yourself. Most people do care about the "future". By the way, if you're really concerned about your health (and you probably aren't because you're not concerned about other things as well) you would add a little meat in your diet since meat contains certain protiens you can't find in other protien alternatives. \_ My people have been vegitarian for thousands of years and they have been living just fine. The average lifespan in my family is ~ 90 yrs all disease free. I have the same diet they do, I'm not going to change because some idiot motd poster things that meat is good for you. If you read modern medical science you will find that any animal fat is bad for your health. The lower on the food chain you go for your nurishment, the better. And all this "future" bs, we've got to save the planet for the "future", we've got to cut back on modern civilization so that the "future generations" can enjoy the "planet" is total crap. You basically want to restrict technological progress because you can't keep up and you want to condemn future generations to live in an undeveloped society. \_ there are 9 amino acids humans can't produce. all of them are found in the plant world. \_ Maybe you'll learn to spell protein sometime soon. \_ PLUZ! A world economy reduces the chance of world wars, as people are too busy trying to exploit each other. I'd rather have that than the holocaust, combat casualties, biological weapons and etc. \_ Typical Left-Wing Mythology. Let's all become communists like in CCCP and Cuba and live in dirty little hovels shivering in the cold without the benefit of modern civilization. Idiot. \_ not to argue pro-communism, but imperialist policies do extract an unequal exchange of values from third-world countries, via their technological and political leverage, thus keeping them much poorer than they would otherwise be. a Buick regal should not equal 10,000,000 bananas but it often does. \_ This is incorrect. Foreign investment NEVER hurts a country. \_ Commie alert - I dont think Marx could have said it better himself. \_ why would anyone that poor want to buy a buick regal? \_ why would anyone want to buy a buick regal? \_ Do you have one? It is not too expensive and is a reasonably reliable car. \_ the real reason 3rd world countries are poor is because they breed too much. they're already poor, then have 10 kids who end up with 1/10 of what their parents had, except for the few who make it to the very top. you cannot build wealth across generations if you're having that many kids, it's quite simple. growth of gdp has to exceed population growth for net per capita gain. but instead we have whole nations in africa where unicef aid is the primary economic force and they no longer even know how to provide for themselves, yet still have 10 kids. it's like feeding raccoons in your backyard, soon there are twice as many and they completely depend on you. \_ This is the problem that they have in India. The birth rate of the poorest people is about 5-10 per family. A good way to help these people has yet to be devised, as they reject education (its free) or better living conditions. When the government clean up the slums and build good housing for slum dwellers, they ended up selling the free housing and returning to the slums. When the gov. offered free education for the poorest children, few showed up, prefering to engage in menial labor. First world consumption has nothing to do with the poverty these people face. Thier misery is thier own doing. \_ I believe in Rush! \_ That's why we should support commie China's birth control policies. \_ No. I don't think that it should be forced. But people ought to understand that a high birth rate is unsustainable and voluntarily stop. It is the part about making people understand that is difficult. \_ even if they understand, they won't voluntarily stop. it's like traffic congestion. we all understand that if most of us employed alternative transportation the roads would be clearer, so what. why should i do it if you don't. \_ alternative transportation? you mean RIDE BIKE?!? I live +30 miles from work. I can't possibly RIDE BIKE! Yeah I could take a bus, but I just have to change 5 times and it only takes 5 hours. What about the train you say? Well for $6.50 a day, its cheaper and faster to drive. If well planned alternative transport was available I would take it. I have in the past. I took BART from Fremont every day for the four years I was at Cal. \_ yes but that's my point; using other transport is a disadvantage to you so you won't do it unless you have to, or unless it's only slightly less convenient than cars. thus the analogy to people stopping having kids. which deprives them of their instinctive reproduction need and...oh forget it. besides no one forced you to live +30 mi from work. \_ I can't afford to pay $1800-$2400 in rent every month after the IRS gets its unfair share. The BART was farily less convenient than driving, but I still did it because it was reasonably priced and moderately well planned and managed. The trains and buses are no where near that well run. If they were I would take them. \_ Driving costs ~$0.32 per mile on average when maintenance, depreciation, etc. are taken into account. That's how much you can deduct on the tax form for driving your own car for business purpose. \_ I don't think the IRS will take too kindly to my deducting $0.32 for each mile driven. Anyway, I've tried public transport to work, it just doesn't work for me and I believe that it doesn't for most people, that's why buses and trains go empty. Planning is key to public transport and that is sorely lacking in CA. \_ yeah, maybe we can come up with a darwinist birth policy. we say a kid is worth like $200k. for each kid you want, you have to pay the gov't that amount. problem solved. \_ Uhhh.. pay the government!? Why? Why not just stop (in this country) providing monetary incentives for poor families to have more children? Why not instead provide no monies at all to support the kids, and if they have them and can't care for them, offer them to the families who can afford them that want kids. \_ hey, this is the motd, we already know all that stuff! \_ come anyway. it's a decent film. \_ and these people are the same ones who voted for Clinton & Gore - gimme a break \_ yeah right, russia had their whole nation starve with communisism and their food lines. \_ Don't argue... If it were up to me I would send the whole american communist lot to China or Russia for an educational two-week tour of the likely results of the hegemony of the proletariat. -- born in russia \_ Just because you extremist dumb fucks screwed things up, doesn't mean others will. \_ You don't understand. Property redistribution is wrong. The more you go with it, the worse off you will be. Don't give me your misguided relativism. Communism is a bad idea. Always was, always will be. It's a good thing many people can actually learn from Russia's tragic mistakes, even if overfed dumb fucks like you can't. \_ Sorry. Liberals != Communists. I know it may be hard for little russian ex-commies to understand that. The main reason soviet union failed is due to having a command economy rather than a market economy. Nobody is suggesting that we turn the economy into a command economy. \_ You don't want to be lecturing a 'little russian ex-commie' on why CCCP failed. The reason CCCP failed is because 'property redistribution' == invitation to loot the wealthy (i.e. productive) members of society. No society succeeds with such an economic plan. A command economy was an after- thought, a temporary way to keep a dead body in motion for a few more years. \_ Like I said, you don't have to push things to extremes. A little "redistribution of wealth" like the progressive tax and intelligent use of welfare to help people with difficulties get back up is actually good for the economy. Of course you do not want to constantly redistributing wealth such that there no longer is any incentive to work. \_ taxation is a violation of my freedom. The founding fathers knew this and it was banned until early this century. Progressive taxation which takes money from someone who rightfully owns it and gives it to someone who doesn't is a crime. It should be outlawed. Its my damn money and you've no right to it. If I choose to help poor people that is my right. If I don't that is my right too. You should not take it from me because you think that it is right. \_ Some people here in the west are just too dumb to understand how bad the living conditions are in a communist society. They think that the everyone is equal because everyone is a poor peon is a good thing. \_ Is it free? I don't want to have to pay to get brainwashed, lied to, mislead, and only told one side of a very complex story. Also, what are my odds of picking up a real hottie commie chick and getting some action after the flick? If I show the proper signs of being brainwashed do my chances go up? Are there any hottie commie chicks or are they all hairy armpit club wielding Berkeley leftists? \_ hottie commie chicks is an oxymoron. There was a saying in communist russian: What do you call a pretty girl in Russia? A tourist. \_ Nah. I remember this very pretty russian gymnast who, after coming to the US, became fat and ugly. \_ maybe if your idea of pretty is "prepubescent anorexic." |
2000/12/22-23 [Finance/Shopping] UID:20157 Activity:kinda low |
12/21 I need to buy a new bed & mattress, but I'm a poor grad student. What's a place to buy a decent, cheap set in/near Berkeley? \_ futon? \_ Discount Depot on San Pablo near University. They were the cheapest place for beds/mattresses/futons when I was an undergrad. --chris \_ Purchased twice(futons) from them over 8 year period in late 80s early 90s. Dunno about now, but they were good/fine then.Small delivery guy with compact toyota delivered the queen/full frame and futon himself up 3 floors for $10 fee. |
2000/12/21-23 [Finance/Shopping] UID:20152 Activity:moderate |
12/20 Has anyone ever worked at a McDonalds? Do the eggs in the egg McMuffins come precooked/preshaped, or do they use real eggs? \_ They are real eggs, you crack them into these metal rings. -tom \_ Are you saying this from experience? \_ yes. Though I usually worked closing. -tom \_ And I always thought they were extruded like plastic. \_ I thought they were spun and grown into ingots (like silicon wafers) and then pulled out and sliced up. \_ On a similar note, I've heard rumors that Jack In The Box tacos aren't actually made of beef... rather, some cheap soy substitute. I asked for a nutrition fact sheet type thing last time I was there but just got blank stares. I'd really like to know since I don't like beef but really like those tacos. Truth or urban legend? \_ I've also heard that KFC chickens are machine grown and headless and that people wake up in ice baths with their kidneys removed. Ah..the freshman urban legend forwards. \_ KFC is made of soilant green! Soilant green is made of HUMANS!!! \_ Tom finally weighs in on something he knows about-- MacDonalds and flowers! \_ Don't knock flowers. That's important. \_ absolutely! without flowers I wouldn't have a cheap, convenient, and disposable gift to give the cheap easy women I date. |
2000/11/23-28 [Computer/Networking, Finance/Shopping] UID:19904 Activity:moderate |
11/23 Can somebody recommend a cheap wireless phone plan for $20 or less a month? I need it for only emergency only. And it must come with a phone. \_ Work gave me a cell. They pay everything. It sucks. -- 24x7 slave. \_ Ha ha. You accepted the cell phone from work? What did they have on you? Did you kill or rape a co-worker? Or are you too stupid to live? \_ 6 figures and they never call me. I didn't "accept". It's part of the job. I could go with no cell and get half or nothing. And like John I use it as my free personal phone. \_ 6 figures and no cell. The are afraid to call me. You need to be more important. \_ That doesn't mean much if you don't have a phone. \_ They are scared to ask me to carry a pager or a cell phone. Very scared. \_ work gave me a cell. people from work rarely ever call me on it. it's great! \_ Last time work gave me a cell phone I regularly racked up > $400 phone bills on it. "Fringe benefit." -John \_ Ooh, y'all six-figure niggas by the name of jigga. --hater \_ Consider prepaid minutes + cheap phone. No monthly charge. \_ The cheapest PacBell plan is somewhere around this price... I think it might be $25/mo. and usually comes with a phone. \_ SprintPCS has a $20/month plan for 20 minutes. I used to remember there being a $15/month plan for 30 minutes. Oh well. \_ http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc2549.html \_ http://www.csaa.com/memberservices/cell-phones.asp |
2000/6/8-9 [Finance/Shopping] UID:18433 Activity:high |
4/69 How does one get free access to UCB libraries without joining the alumni association? -jeffwong \_ There is no way, you cheap school-spirit-less person. \_ Don't you mean cheap-school spirit-less person? \_ the alumni association is cheaper than the alternative. there is no alternative that is both free and legal. |
2000/4/24-26 [Finance/Shopping] UID:18099 Activity:moderate |
4/24 Does anyone have a copy of Half-life they might be willing to sell me for cheap? Or Planescape: Torment? - seidl \_ Warez. \_ Looking for not warez. Ebay prices just seem a little too random right now. - seidl \_ If no one has used ones, seidle, someone needs to go to a \_ If no one has used ones, seidl, someone needs to go to a computer show and buy you a new one for cheap \_ Which computer shows have half-life for cheap? Living in colorado makes many shows a little far to go to. - seidl |
2000/2/3-4 [Finance/Investment, Finance/Banking, Finance/Shopping] UID:17416 Activity:high |
2/2 According to McCain, he's for Social Security and "paying down the debt." When we pay down the debt, who benefits the most? IN other words, who holds certificates to our nation's debt? \_ The CHILDREN. Won't somebody *please* think of the CHILDREN! \- er, i think you are misunderstanding what this means. the alternative to paying down the debt isnt defaulting. paying down the debt really means you will slow down the rate of issuing new debt. you have to finance deficit spending either by borrowing [in which case the govt competes with private industry for savings, raising the cost of money, i.e. the itnerest rate] or the govt can print money, an option not open to a private individual/firm, but not totally free for the govt either, since paying back with inflated dollars is kind of a partial defualt. quite a bit of US treasure instruments are held by foreigners, btw. --psb \_ I think you are misunderstanding the question. The person asked who will benefit by the paying off of the National debt, not what effect it would have upon any (hypothetical) future deficit spending. \_ #1 holder of US Treasury products is Americans. Japanese #2. I think Chinese have recently started buying huge amounts. \_ Why do you think that the Gov't's lenders want to be paid back instead of continuing to be paid interest? And remember, this is money they already gave the Gov't. Right now I think $200G goes to paying iterest on our debt. How much does our military cost? --PeterM \_ My point (admittedly unclear) about the military is that the interest on our debt could go a long way to paying the military budget. --PeterM \- if you look at debt/GDP for the us, the number isnt too bad. the problem here isnt high debt, but extrmemely low private savings rate. --psb \_ You want to dump the military? Which foreign language would you prefer to learn to talk to your new leaders? \_ Japanese! :-) \_ right. in japan, you'd be lucky to find people to openly express themselves in public conversation like this. \_ thats why I like it. And no more stupid "gay marriages" either. \_ If you want to live in a cultural clam shell, go there. No reason to destroy this country when Japan is only a plane flight away. To each his own. \_ No tipping! Schoolgirl panties in vending machines! It's a utopia! \_ And blue dots on all the pr0n. \_ Blue Dots are Artistic, or something. --oj \_ Pubic hair is banned. Rape is ok. with nukes at our disposal? The age of true tactical warfare on a large, sustained scale are long gone. Red Storm Rising will never occur in an age of easy and cheap nuclear armament. \_Screw the military, we have nukes, who's gonna invade us with nukes at our disposal? The age of true tactical warfare on a large, sustained scale are long gone. Red Storm Rising will never occur in an age of easy and cheap nuclear armament. \_ You're neither funny, nor clever, nor a good troll. \_ You're an idiot. Or this is a weak troll. Or both. Either way, there's no point in providing a serious reply. No military = pick your new foreign leadership. \_ We should take all the welfare cases, issue them with little mind control helmets, and give them all backpack nukes. That would rewl. Also, we should get rid of all our tanks and buy a few hundred thousand Daihatsu Grand Moves (the really narrow minibuses that always tip over) and put Davy Crockett XM-28 recoilless atomic cannon on the top of them and fill them with TNT and have these massive swarms of little stupid-looking minibuses with bigfoot tires chewing up the countryside lobbing rapid-fire atomic munitions at the enemy before ramming them in a blaze of glory. We'll get rid of INS and customs/border patrol too, and replace them with massive 300-deep belts of of B-54 SADM nuclear land mines. We will take care of our strategic interests by building a titanic post-hole digger and dropping massive amounts of nuke silos in the entire midwest, side-by-side. Problems with Iraq? Send 'em a few Minutemen IIs for fun. China acting up? Santa's bringing a bag full of Titans with 20MT warheads to Peking. All US-flagged vessels will be replaced with TridentIII subs (let the cruise-line geezers swim) and all US air carriers will be required to replace their planes with B-70s, for extra impressive value. Slim Pickens for president! Nukular Fucking Weapons! We'll be invincible! -John \_ You're an idiot. Or this is a weak troll. Or both. Either way, there's no point in providing a serious reply. No military = pick your new foreign leadership. \_ John, you my hero. \_ Oh My God John I just creamed my shorts. I wish I wrote that. -brain \_ Funny how I knew this was John by line 2. I got as far as "mind control helmets". \_ I would totally LOVE to keep and save all the money that the social security system is taking away from me to squander on the retirees of today. \_ You get your turn when you're retired to screw the children and grand children of the people who are screwing you now. \_ Unfortunately, I am of post-babyboom and pre-echoboom, meaning that I get screwed and when I try to screw, they have the numbers to share the burden. Maybe that means I will have a comfortable retirement even if I spend all my money today. \_ Me too and no we won't because the 'echo boomers' are going to make sure there's lots of SS money in place before they get there. They'll outnumber the old geezers. We'll be fine. SS isn't the kind of program that can be changed over night and it isn't going away any time soon. \_ Pay down the debt = interest rates go down, bonds are less attractive (capital is cheaper), money is distributed to more efficient uses (ie. capital) ... Virtually every credible economist, including Greenspan, supports paying down the debt before taxes. The benefits of paying down the debt assumption of 1.5% average annual growth rate, which is way conservative. The average for the century (with Great Depression and all) is something like twice that, not to mention current growth rates... outway lower taxes. \_ Too bad we do neither to any great degree. \_ Ah, the sound of young impressionable minds soaking up libertarian propaganda. Government debt is not like yours or mine. Most of the lack of a name in an inherintly anonymous forum. I government debt is owned directly or inderectly (eq via pension funds) private individuals. So, we have a bunch of ordinary Americans repaying another bunch of ordinary Americans. Who exacly is getting a better deal - the lenders or the borrowers is, as usual, far from clear. The very popular study of Social Security going broke is based on the assumption of 1.5% average annual growth rate, which is way conservative. The average for the century (with Great Depression and \_ Oops, sorry I wrote that. -- ilyas all) is something like twice that, not to mention current growth rates... Does the above poster imply that "Greenspan supports lower interest rates"? (simple transitivity) The way I understand Federal Reserve's current approach is that they see issuing government paper as primarily an instrument of monetary policy, not fiscal policy. -muchandr \_ Hey Muchkin, I never had a chance to ask what your political views were. -- ilyas \_ Then don't. Not on the motd. \_ Hey, the man isn't stupid, he can write me. And sign your name. -- ilyas \_ What's up with the obsession with signing one's name? If they wanted to they would have in the first place, duh. \_ Coward. -- ilyas \_ G-duh! You're such an idiot. "Anyone who doesn't post everything with their real name like me is a coward!!!! -ilyas". Sheesh, you and Tom. At least Tom is mature enough now to stop drooling over the anon posters and dismissing them entirely merely for lack of a name in an inherently anonymous forum. I suspect it'll take you even longer to grow up since you're clearly less intelligent than Tom. \_ It's 'inherently.' And the motd isn't inherently anything. You can choose to sign your name and stand by your words like me, or Tom, or psb or you could just be an anonymous bombardier whose words don't carry any weight. -- ilyas \_ Anonymity does not make the words any less true. And signing one's name doesn't make the words any more true. You're a perfect example of the latter. You sign everything yet your words signify nothing. Numerous anonymous people here have provided a lot of useful and accurate information. Anonymity has nothing to do with the quality or value of the contribution. And yes the motd is inherently anonymous as there is no signing requirement or method to enforce such a thing. The default is anonymity. If you choose otherwise, that's nice, but not at all relevent to anything. \_ If they signify nothing then replying is a waste of time. At any rate, I am of the opinion that truly tasteful flaming has to have a name behind it. God knows there are lots of people I don't like, and I never had a problem telling them this to their face. -- ilyas \_ I'm glad you're happy being a loutish boor. The rest of us try to get along and mostly shut the fuck up when we don't like someone because telling them so won't improve matters and often makes it worse. And what does tasteful flaming have to do with anything? Feeling like a topic change? \_ Since low private savings rate is considered a problem, what are are some approaches to increasing the incentive for private savings. |
1999/11/8-9 [Finance/Shopping] UID:16848 Activity:high |
11.8 Looking for really cheap CD labeller and labeller program. Suggestion? \_ sharpie marker \_ NeatO \_ http://neato.com not cheap \_ Permanent Marker (tm). Cost: $1-$2. |
1999/9/27-28 [Computer/HW/Laptop, Finance/Shopping, Computer/HW/Display] UID:16604 Activity:high |
9/27 Anyone know if and when LCD monitor price will drop? \_ when people start buying them. go buy a few million so that i can afford one myself. \_ Actually, people *are* buying them. There is and has been a shortage of supply, which is preventing prices from coming down (and adds to the cost of laptops). See a good story about it at: http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/business/docs/computer28.htm \_ prices will drop slowly \_ Didn't it take a long ass time for regular 17" monitors to drop? I bought mine for $1k and it was that price until about a year and a half ago (or something like that). \_ I bought a 17" monitor 4 years ago for 600, although it was the cheapest model back then. \_ I bought a 17" monitor 4 years ago for $450. \_ Not new. Off a truck maybe. I got one for 650 four years ago this summer. The lowest on the market was around 600. There weren't any $450 17" monitors four years ago. Only used, refurbs, and off the back of trucks. You're either confused or lying. The high end was around $1300, btw. $450? Ridiculous! |
1999/5/11-13 [Finance/Shopping] UID:15796 Activity:nil |
5/11 recommend really cheap company that provides pager service? \_ Do you mean cheap as in the pager service is low priced or cheap as in the company is really cheap and wants to rip you off? \_ low priced. not looking for anything fancy like alpha-numeric. just cheap. how hard can that be? |
1999/1/28-31 [Finance/Shopping] UID:15311 Activity:nil |
1/27 Where is a good place on campus to get cheap intro to swing dance lessons? \_ I tried the Tuesday-night swing dance lessons at Hearst Gym a few months ago. It wasn't exactly cheap ($5), but it was alright. I _think_ it's on Tuesdays. --jsjacob \_ It's on Fridays this semester. You may also want to check out UCBD on Wednesdays, also in Hearst. Re $5, it's cheaper if you join the club (at which point it's free). \_ what room and what time? is there an url for this? \_ Oh god. Will all the cs geeks please stop going to swing clubs? It's starting to make me sick. \_ That's right, they should all become Mambo-dancing sexpots, like me. -John \_ That's funny; all the CS geeks I meet at clubs are good dancers. |
1999/1/6-7 [Consumer/Camera, Finance/Shopping] UID:15176 Activity:high |
1/3 I'm planning to co-locate a server (with 13 gig of HD). What is a good and really cheap affordable backup tape drive I can buy, with good Linux drivers? \_ Basically, DLT > 8mm (Exabyte || AIT) or 4mm (DAT) In my opinion, you're better off with even a DLT2000 than an Exabyte (reliability sux) or a DAT drive (reliability also wanx) because in my 4 years x.p. in the backup field, never once have I seen a DLT drive fail. If it's cleaned properly, write errors are few. The newer AIT drives are better than Exabyte's (incidentally, Exabyte declined SONY the right to OEM there brand, hence AIT was formed) in terms of quality and performance, however, the price is not cheap, nor has the basic architecture of 8mm changed---tape path from hell. The DLT has a much more natural (fewer winding heads, less tape tention) tape path than 8mm or even DAT. The newer DLT7000 drives easily get 5MB/sec native compression (non-compression). AIT and the newest DDS3 hum around 3MB/sec. Tape drive makers claim you can get 2:1 hardware compression if you turn it on (i.e. double your performance to 10MB/sec), but this depends on how compress- able your data is (bitmaps, text, database) and it increases wear-and-tear on the drive heads (they must stop-and-wait- for-data-compression-write-stop-repeat). If I had a choice between 8mm and 4mm, I'd actually go with the 4mm - 8mm is not any more realiable to be worth the extra $pacebux. Let me know if you need software. And next time, sign your name so I can send email to you. -mtbb \_ I've never seen an Exabyte fail except for single tape that had been severely abused. How often have you seen Exabyte failures? \_ When DLT 2000s & 4000s were coming out, all the vendors of Exabytes were sick of the piles of RMAs. Once they began shipping DLTs instead of Exabytes, all-the-sudden, those RMAs disappeared. The problem with Exabyte drives is the Tape Path From Hell. It wears down the tape, the drive heads, and since there are more moving parts, there is a much greater chance of tapes being eaten up, read/write heads breaking, etc. I have never seen a DLT drive eat a tape like an Exabyte. AIT seems to have solved some of these issues by reducing the number of spindles and creating a better tape path and integrating memory chips into the tapes themselves (helps load and seek times). While DLT7000s are still quite pricy, I think the best price/performance deal on the market is the DLT2000XT. If you want 8mm, avoid the 85xx and 87xx series. The 8900 (Mammoth) drive is fair, but expensive. I worked for a year and a half at a backup hardware/software re-seller, then for another two and half years at a backup software company. With drives I personally handled, I had no failures with DLT, 1/1 Mammoth had problems loading tapes, 1/1 8700 broke twice and uncountable 8500/8505 drive failures. As for DAT only a few problems with those drives. \_ Any brand-name standard SCSI DAT drive (Seagate, HP, ...). You might want to ask whether there have been problems with a particular model you're considering. \_ DAT absolutely sucks. Get the cheap DLT drive or AIT. -tom \_ Ive read alot of stuff about how DATs are bad, but I've used the Eliant 820 8mm from Exabyte and haven't had any probs w/ it thus far, in fact it backs up http://www.housing.berkeley.edu --sly \_ DAT is 4mm, not 8mm. The old 8mm Exabyte stuff sucks pretty bad too but the newer may be better. I'm skeptical of AIT. DLT is much more reliable, but $$$ and the tapes and drives are big. If you just want something dirt cheap the 1/4" drives work ok for occasional backups, but the tapes are expensive. DAT is ok if the environment is good and you keep everything clean. -phr \_ we have DAT tapes in machine rooms that we clean twice monthly and use new tapes every 3 months and still have horrible reliability. -tom \_ Yeah, but have you ever successfully done a restore? -ausman \_ What about 8mm tapes like Exabyte? \_ What do you think AIT is? --dim \_ there are lotsa differences btwn normal 8mm and AIT dipshit.. a cheap AIT drive is prob the best solution.. dlt 4000 is prob good too but prob gon be a bit more expensive but every bit as good -shac \_ Is AIT an 8mm format or isn't it? --dim \_ AIT uses 8mm tapes but it's not compatible with old-style exabyte formats. -tom |
1998/5/7 [Finance/Shopping, Computer/SW/Languages] UID:14065 Activity:low |
5/6 Recommendations for where to buy $50 list price programming books cheap? - http://amazon.com? Barnes & Noble? book clubs? -- Thanks! \_ That would depend on the title. Check http://www.acses.com for a stylish comparison shopping agent for new books (or http://www.mxbf.com for used or out of print books) \_ Try http://www.books.com Most of the books there are cheaper than both amazon and b&n. \_ Except they're part of Cendant Corp... evil, evil company. \_ ugh, <DEAD>www.bookpool.com!<DEAD> Where have you people been? \_bookpool rules. |
1998/2/25-27 [Consumer/PDA, Finance/Shopping] UID:13737 Activity:high |
2/25 Where's the cheapest place to get a Palm Pilot Pro? \_ <DEAD>www.miamimeg.com<DEAD> $297 --aaron \_ Fry's has good prices. but you can also buy the mem upgrade there if you need it \_ Is Fry's cheaper than 199 for personal and $290 for pro and $100 for upgrade at <DEAD>www.miamimeg.com<DEAD> \_ Frys prices change every couple days, and vary from being fairly expensive to pretty good. Since they don't have a website, you can't tell in advance. Best prices you \_ Pick up the phone and call. \_ yeah, that'll work. we're talking about fry's here. can probably get are about $290-300 for the Pro. I've rarely seen prices that low on them at Frys. -cdaveb \_ Check out what's on clearance at Fry's. I got a Cassiopeia for $100, when the regular price was $300. -peterl \_ Did you ever once stop to think, "Why is this on clearance?" Maybe it sucks, so no one buys it? \_ Of course. I checked it out thoroughly before buying. It works fine. The reason it was so cheap was because they were discontinuing that item; For $300 no one buys them, but for $100, they're pretty cool. -peterl \_FRY's sucks my cock. What the hell is a Cassiopeia? Did it actually WORK when you got it home?? \_ http://www.casiohpc.com Yes, it works perfectly. \_ http://www.pdapage.com -mogul \_ I got my Pro plus modem for $370 incld tax from a computer show |
1998/2/17-18 [Finance/Shopping, Consumer/Camera] UID:13688 Activity:high |
2/17 where can i get 6 rolls of 35mm negatives reprint, cheap? -jwang \_ Price Club / Costco. Even if you choose Kodak processing, it's still cheaper than Kodak processing in drug stores. --- yuen \_ If you don't mind hundreds of people pawing through the racks to find their film, ruining yours. \_ You get what you pay for. |
1996/11/5 [Finance/Shopping] UID:31993 Activity:nil |
11/4 And you people didn't belive shit^H^H^Hprintlink could be worse than BBNPlayNet... \_ This new connection is a joke, right? No one could believe this incredibly shitty lossy connection works, could they? I get better reliability and access time bouncing off the satellites to Antartica! \_ Anyone who said that the BBNplanet connection sucked has been living in SpoiledBratLand for a looong time. It's my theory that we switched to SprintNet because the campus decided it couldn't afford BBNplanet any longer and went with a cheaper service. (Sprintnet...) -- Marco \_ It's not a theory - it's what actually happened (except that the reason we couldn't afford BBNPlanet is that they jacked up the University's rates when they went for-profit compared to what the non-profit BARRnet was charging one of it's co-founders). \_ Not to mention that all the UC campuses in Northern California will go out of one DS3 connection through SprintLink instead of individual connections for each campus individually. Even UCOP which had been a CERFNet POP is now on the same SprintLink connection. I mean even the CSU system has a CSUNet, where's the UCNet?!? \_ There is a UCNet inArticle Unavailable |
1993/5/6 [Finance/Shopping] UID:31301 Activity:nil |
5/4 Now that the high speed modems are in, does anyone know the best place around Berkeley to buy a USR Sportster? I know I can find them cheap, but what is the absolute cheapest they sell for? (non mail order) -xxxxxxmp \_ Price Club's Zoom 14.4K, v.32 v.42 modem's only $250. Too bad they sold out. \_ Fry's USR Sportster $210, external, fax \_ DO mention if these are internal or external \_ A couple of places in the current Computer Currents show the USR Sportster 14400 w/o fax at $180 internal, $200 external. (with fax at $209 ext). Best bet in Berkeley is to take up Uncle Ralph's "lowest price guarantee" and haggle there, but most cheap places are in South Bay... \_ I paid $205 at NCA in south bay... -XXic |
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