Food for thought on topics of programming, philosophy, politics, and a project MGB.
But this article is frankly hilarious. Wonderful material, as usual, from the Mises Institute:
http://www.mises.org/story/2529
Nothing like a hypocrite to make my day happy, especially if he is inadvertently helping the world. If only our representatives in Congress would learn to be as crooked as Bono and still help make the world a better place.
Just finished CoD WaW, and like all of the Call of Duty PC games, I enjoyed it quite a bit. My only gripe is the length, which was short, even for a Call of Duty game (CoD 4: Modern Warfare actually took me more than 3 days to beat).
Beyond that just a few remarks. The graphics looked great with my new video card, and the gameplay was fast-paced, brutal, and fun. New to the series are severed body parts, flamethrowers, and lots of language which make the game earn its M rating but add a new level of realism to the statement that “war is Hell.” Call of Duty says enough about the second world war to be reverent without getting in the way of gameplay with overly sanctimonious characters (I’m looking at you, Brothers in Arms). Other than that the game was a blast, and if I can get the online play to be a little more stable, (I always have problems with PunkBuster) the public servers look to be plentiful and full of players.
Oh and the tank mission was kind of lame. And I haven’t played the Nazi Zombie level yet but I hear it’s great. I hear the standard game reviewers bitching and moaning about WWII being played out, but I feel like one real exception to this is the Call of Duty series. As far as I’m concerned, as long as they keep doing new campaigns and updating their gaming engine, they have the gameplay mechanic down and frankly CoD 4 was the weakest in the series so far because of the switch to modern warfare. Call of Duty is straightforward FPS awesomeness and they should keep it up.
It’s one thing to gripe if a new series is doing WWII, but Call of Duty is doing it right, so as they say “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”
I put this under “Linux” even though it’s not really. This is a basic review of the Intel D945GCLF2, which is a nice Mini-ITX board great for a PVR project.
That fan is the downside.
In short, this board is wonderful. The processor packaged with it is a dual core Atom processor that has more than enough juice to crank out basic video playback for a PVR. I couldn’t make the resolution from the VGA port any bigger than 1024×768, but that might have been Windows, and I didn’t mess with it much since I was using the s-video at 800×600 anyway.
The board works completely in Linux with the exception of the s-video which is in progress. There is a patch in the wild that will make it work, and one should expect to see the Intel driver support even that, probably in time for the distribution releases of Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04.
If you’re doing a PVR, don’t get a low-profile case or you’ll get locked into Windows (as I did) as low-profile PCI tv-tuners are few and far between, and ones that work in Linux are either hard to find or nonexistent. PCI-e cards are much more numerous nowadays, and you might want to go for a different board with a PCI-e x1 slot instead.
Now then, the single big downside is the fan on the VGA chip. The thing is a piece of shit. It’s very loud, and mine crapped out after three weeks leaving us with a dead PVR. This is apparently a common occurence with this board, but it’s a cheap fix.
Hear that? Me neither.
This is the Scythe “Mini Kaze.” It’s silent. With this, I can’t hear our new PVR even when the room is quiet, much less with the TV on. It’s about $4.50, and after shipping will come in under $10. If you decide to get this motherboard, order this fan at the same time. You won’t regret it, and it makes the motherboard a perfect Mini-ITX board.
Freedom is freedom. It confuses me how those on both sides miss that obvious point. You can’t just support the freedoms you like or all will be lost. You either support all of freedom, or you oppose all of freedom. There is no middle ground.
In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube . . .
-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
This is something that has been bothering me for a long time. With the recent disintegration of anything that our current government could have possibly called dignity following the AIG “scandal,” which is actually more of a diversion but I digress, I can’t help but wonder: Are the people who voted for Barack Obama watching the news?
If they didn’t see Chris Dodd admit that he put the loophole into the contract that allowed the million-dollar bonuses to AIG, or Geithner admitting that he knew about the loophole before it was signed into law or Obama showing that he hadn’t read the stimulus package he signed then they have absolutely no right to vote in the next election.
Zero. None. Nada. Zilch. All this “rock the vote” crap is just utter bullshit if the people coming out to vote start paying attention a year before the election.
BECAUSE POLITICS ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT THE DAY AFTER THE ELECTION AS THE DAY OF. If you aren’t an informed voter, please understand that voting is far more irresponsible than not voting.
This is Conner. I thought I’d share one of his favorite pastimes, which is chasing rocks.
In this case, he isn’t even deterred by six inches of water.
I think the best part is that it’s repeatable, given that you have a constant supply of rocks, since he doesn’t retrieve them.
For Xisdibik:
First of all: The older the MGB is, the more expensive it’s going to be, with a considerable jump in late 1974 when MG started making the Bs with rubber bumpers, and messed with the handling. The handling is particularly bad for the 1974 rubber bumper, 1975 and 1976 cars, so these are the cheapest. The ’77,’78,’79, and ’80 models are fine, but all of the RBs sit higher than the CBs. RBs can be converted, aesthetically, to a CB for a couple thousand dollars if you know how to weld. Again, that should be brought into consideration if you plan on doing that.
For $500 or less, you can get a parts car. These don’t run, and don’t have much hope of it usually. You could score one if you’re doing a real restoration, which while it doesn’t sound like you are, you never know: you might eventually. A lot of people buy one of these for the looks or because they think it’s fun to drive, and get sucked into the obsession :).
For around $1,000 you can find yourself a project. These may have any number of problems including rust, not running, bad interiors, and the list goes on. For reference, my MGB cost $800. It doesn’t run, needs a paint job, and the interior is tired but passable if it got a new carpet.
For around $3,000-$5,000 you can get something driveable. This example is good because the exterior looks good, the engine is described as working (probably has an issue here and there), and the interior is tired but passable. These are cars that went through a full restoration some years back and have started to wear out again, or were just kept in excellent condition from the get-go, but will need major work probably in the next 10 years to prevent them from being a project. On the mgexperience forums, these are the cars that are “daily drivers” most of the time.
But of course, in the $3k-$5k range, you should watch out for rip-offs. This one has rust on the underside and is going to require big bodywork, and the fact that it’s paint job looks so recent with that body rot is a bad sign. You have to check for rust. One with engine troubles and no rust is a much better buy than one with rust and a good engine. You’ll only get better aquainted with the car if there’s an engine mishap from time to time!
If you have serious dough, you can get pristine cars. Besides the assumed extra work of owning an older car, that one looks like something that’s almost as good as new, for about $10,000. You can pay as much as $30,000, but frankly, even if you have the cash: don’t.
than seeing left-wing nutjob “we should release the Guantanamo prisoners into upstate New York” liberals like Deepak Chopra try to blast Rush Limbaugh. The article I linked to is nothing but a lot of name-calling; Chopra doesn’t touch on a single topic. He merely calls Rush morally bankrupt for caring enough about the U.S. and being so devoted in his own beliefs that he actually gets outraged when he sees what he does.
Why does this make me happy? Because people like Deepak Chopra would never engage Rush Limbaugh in a real debate. Even comments on my previous posts have one type of reply: name-calling, to both myself and Rush. To Chopra, Limbaugh’s beliefs in freedom, liberty, and individual responsibility are beyond incorrect: they are morally bankrupt. But Chopra doesn’t say it like that, because that’s crazy! Chopra instead says Rush Limbaugh is morally bankrupt, has “thrown out God,” (despite Rush frequently mentioning God on his program), and judges what is right or wrong by what pisses him off, and not the other way around. However, despite never addressing the issues, Deepak Chopra does what Ellsworth Toohey realized he should not do in the beginning of The Fountainhead. Just as Toohey refused to give Howard Roark even negative publicity, Chopra keeps Limbaugh in the spotlight that someone that is as wrong, as mean-headed, and evil as Chopra says Rush is should never have for a moment.
So keep talking. Because every time a story like that runs, another listener tunes into Rush. And even if they don’t agree with him, if they think about what he’s saying, over time, I believe they very often will end up agreeing.
If you want to listen to Rush or Glenn Beck, Indiana’s WOWO has a live internet radio stream so you can tune in wherever you are. Rush Limbaugh is on the air from 12:00-3:00PM EST.
Short answer: Because it’s subsidized, and there is an artificially created demand.
Long answer:
College is expensive for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is the State schools and Federal Aid. Private schools (the biggest offenders of huge tuition) are primarily attended by poor and extremely wealthy students because both can afford the outrageous tuition, one through the government and the other through their own deep pockets. But the middle-class kids go to their State schools because their parents have already been forced to pay some of the tuition (through taxes) and so the tuition is kept artificially low enough to go through with a minimal amount of debt.
What this means is: if your parents are relatively successful, at many private schools they (read: you) will be punished by receiving no financial aid. If they are poor, be it because of bad circumstances or true ineptitude, the government will pay their way, and if they are well-off, they can pay your way.
This article is typical of the ignorance surrounding the subject. The author even admits that she doesn’t “know much about economics,” but, regardless, calls for a cap on the price of college. As demonstrated in the 70s by the price caps during the gasoline crisis, price caps create: shortage. So maybe everyone could afford to go to college, but there wouldn’t be enough college to go around. So even if you had the money and the academics, you might not get in.
The other issue is inflated demand. With the G.I. Bill, it suddenly became important to have that degree regardless of your skills. My grandfather had worked his way up through his company with his 3.5 years of a Princeton education, but management decreed a few years after the war that his position warranted a degree. Despite having 95% of his degree and years of experience, he was demoted to a salesman’s position and struggled for the rest of his life.
This is Government playing with the market, as always, for the worse. Ever wondered what happened to Apprenticeships? College happened. Why would your future employer train you from your high school degree, despite it being more pertinent and efficient in many cases, when the government is already forcing him to pay for your college degree (through taxes)? The answer is: he won’t. And there’s no degree at the end of an apprenticeship, again driving up the demand (and therefore cost) of college.
Furthermore, the public schools herald the importance of college from elementary school onward. Many students come out with the impression that if he/she does not attend a four year university he/she will be a failure. Many of these students have no place at an institution of higher education, and non-practical and non-technical skills are, for the most part, a waste. The vast majority of journalism, film, art, and English majors to name a few are merely filling seats and driving up the cost of school for the Engineering and Science majors. But sadly, this has created a marketplace where even an irrelevant degree will help one find an employer, as many jobs list “a college degree” as a requirement, and many students with degrees like communications and philosophy will find jobs completely unrelated to their field and still be paid better than those who have not been to college.
This isn’t because they are more marketable in any way, it is merely because the market has been flooded with them, and the jobs they gain will hardly be enough of an improvement to pay off their loans if they are middle-income students. Frankly, the whole institution is a scam for many students.
But why do the public schools herald the importance of a college education? The government hands out aid because with each aid package, the politician who supported creating it gains another vote. You wouldn’t vote away your financial aid, would you? And the public school teachers tout the importance of education, especially public education, because their very jobs are at stake. I have been taught since the seventh or eighth grade that public schooling was essentially the most important innovation for civilization since the wheel. But it doesn’t make sense to teach that education is vitally important until 12th grade and then truly optional. No, the more education you can get the better.
In fact, you’re entitled to education, so the “better off” should pay the way of the “less well off,” despite the fact that private grants pay for the truly talented students.
And so every shmuck goes to college and as such “higher education” has degraded into frat parties, communications majors, and a “priceless college experience” that has little or nothing to do with what the student will be doing for the rest of his or her life in many cases.
Every person that goes to college who does not belong there drives up the cost and drives down the value of the degree that the rest are working so hard to earn.
