Ok, a bunch of posts tonight as I start to clear out my accumulated “blog” links that I think are worth sharing. Last one for the night:
Add more cowbell (and Christopher Walken) to any song. After all, any song is improved with more cowbell.
Someone spent a lot of time and effort to amuse lost people.
No goal to this game, but you’ll spend at least 30 minutes playing with it.
I just got a new laptop and was thinking about putting in a Solid State Drive (SSD), now that they seem to be affordable. There was a *huge* drop in price recently, with drives only costing half as much as they did a year before. It turns out this is due in large part to a change in technology – the shift from Single-Level Cell (SLC) technology to Multi-Level Cell (MLC) technology. The trade-off is that MLC drives live only about a 10th of the lifetime of SLC. Even so, it seem that for most people that is long enough (the rough rule of thumb seems to be 20GB/day of data being written for 5 years), and the result is twice the density at the same price.
But reports were coming in that these new drives seemed to really suck. Anandtech had a look at the problem while reviewing the new Intel SSD. Turns out that most of the SSD manufacturers are actually using the same parts, that is a Jmicron controller with Samsung memory, and there is a problem with that combination that results in *very* slow write times – so bad it’s actually worse than a normal drive and results in system instability.
OCZ, who used that combination with their Core series of SSD’s, seem to still be having teething problems, if one were to judge by the hoops people are jumping through in their forums to get everything working. Looks like good, affordable SSD is at least a year away (unless Intel does *way* better than expected).
I know, I really should write about something other than politics. It’s just that the ham-fisted feeding frenzy of the press is so stark that I needed to get some of the frustration off my chest, so here goes.
In his interview with Sarah Palin, Charlie Gibson quotes her as saying “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Well, no, that’s not the quote. Hot Air debunked that a week ago (with video evidence!). The actual quote was:
“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”
When she responded that she was actually borrow from Abraham Lincoln, she was entirely correct (despite Gibson’s obvious incredulity).
Gibson followed it up with a question about “There is a plan and that is God’s plan.” Almost every evangelical I know of says something to the same effect – it’s a generic Calvinistic sentiment that has reached to most every form of protestantism. It means that one should free themselves from worrying about things beyond their control. It’s somewhat akin to saying “c’est la vie”.
Seriously, the press and Palin critics need to do some self-examination.
