juicy_wishun

I'm looking for a replacement PC, but money is tight. It's been suggested that my best bet is a used PC. Any suggestions on the best place to find a good deal on a reasonably sturdy PC?

My requirements are modest. I'll be using it for a media PC, so it has to be something of at elast XP era or later. It would be ideal if it had an S-video or hdmi output, but I could work aroudn not having that.

Thanks in advance.

It's a standard philosophy 101 question, if God is omniscient and knows everythign I am goign to do, can I truly have free will? The logic beign that if everythign is known, then it can't be changed, and therefor any "choices" I make are just an illusion.

But (as any sci-fi fan can tell you) there is a theory in quantum mechanics that whenever an action can go one of two ways, say a coin flipping, it actually creates two distinct realities. One reality in which the coin lands on heads and one where it lands on tails. This woudl mean that for every choice I make, there are parrallel realities for every possible way I could decide.

So, I can freely choose to turn left or turn right on this street. In reality A I go left, in reality B I go right. Omniscient God knows the entirety of both realities, so he's still omniscient. And "I" get free will in my walking path. In fact, I get twice as much free will, since both me(A) and me(B) go on to live fully realized lives after this. Spinning off a nearly-infinite number of parrallell "me"s with their decisions.

I though of this under the influence of extreme insomnia. So my question is this, does this make sense to anyone who doesn't live in my head? Or should this go in the "keep it to yourself" file along with dreams about Betty White circus clowns?

I've been using an obsolete desktop connected to my living room TV as a sort of ghetto media PC, but it's finally given up the electronic ghost. I'd like to replace it, but money is too tight for me to justify spending much money on such a frivolous luxury. Any advice on where to get a bargain-basement PC?

My wish-list is modest. I need something that's compatible with my windows based home server, can navigate the web and play flash videos, and can play (or can be made compatible with) common video formats like .avi, .ogm, and .mkv files. I would also love it to have either an S-video or HDMI video output, as those are the ports my tv currently has unused.

My brother-in-law has been sleeping on our couch "till he finds a place of his own". It's been just under 2 months, and I'm going to start charging him rent. Partly because I want to make him staying a little less attractive and partly because I think it's only fair that he contribute. But I have no idea what would be fair, what do you think?

The rent is $1600 per month plus utilities, which includes a year-round pool and nice sized gym. The building is in Arlington, a very short walk from a metro station, a good mall, a large park, several jogging trails, and a public library branch.

My company issues company visa cards for employees to use during business trips. The employee is required to enter all the details related to each charge into a computer program and then submit the output along with all the receipts and other documentation to the home office. When everythign is checked out, they issue a check to the credit card company to cover the charge. That's all pretty standard.

The thing I don't think is kosher is that they require the card holder to sign up for the card in their own name, against their own personal credit. The employee is responsible for paying all fees and any charges that the company doesn't approve, and any problems with the card will go on the employees personal credit report. That gives me pause. In addition, the process of getting a peyment approved is deliberately difficult. It is not unusual for a perfectly routine charge to sit and wait on a decision for weeks and even on occasion for months. Many employees get so fed up and frustrated that they just pay the charges and don't mess with it. I think that the whole mess may be deliberately designed to lead to that, so that the company gets the individual to pay for things and saves that money.

If it's not illegal for a company to require an employee to assume financial burdens and risk that by rights ar the companies responsibility. well, I think it should be!

My sister's youngest is thinking of moving to the DC area, but he wants to know what job opportunities there are before he commits. I'd like to help, but I haven't been in the job hunt for many a year. Can you give me some idea of what it's like out there so I can give him good advice?

He's in his late twenties, has excellent computer skills but no formal certifications. For the last few years he's been working as basically an office manager for a large government contractor, they sponsored him for whatever the lowest level of security clearance is a few months ago. I think that he finally got approved, but if not, I'm sure he'll be waiting till it is anyway. He's got a bachelors degree, it was in either math or accounting I don't recall which, from UVA.

So, can he get a decent job at a living wage in the DC area or not?

He and I both thank you in advance.

I've beaten my most recent game, and now I'm wondering what would be fun to play next.

What do you suggest?

I have all 3 current gen consoles and a decent gaming PC, so platform is no barrier. I don't care for sports games or most first-person shooters, although I have made exceptions if they were particularly well-done and/or creative.

My motherboard recently lost it from a power surge, completly beyond repair. I really like my current set-up, so I looked into a replacement. Turns out that the manufacturer has discontinued the line, and all the refurbished ones I could find online were from really poorly reviewed and shady-seeming vendors.

Now, I'm computer savvy enough to swap out identical parts, but I'm not comfortable at all trying to figure out all the variables to get a different motherboard and using my existing hardware. I'm just afraid that I'll not understand some abreviation, get a board with the wrong power throughput or something, and get nothing but sparks and ozone when I power it up. Losing my perfectly good other components in the process. On the other hand it seems a waste to buy an entire new machine when I only need one part. The cheap-skate in me has fits at the very idea.

What do you think I should do?

I'd like to start a fitness routine to cut down my flab. I've got access to a fairly well-equipped gym in my apartment building, but my schedule is very tight and I don't have much time to invest in working out each day.

What sort of exercises or routines shoudl I focus on to get the best weight loss results when spending 1/2 hour a day or less?

I have comcast right now, but my trial period is almost up and the price on my combined tv and internet will soon go up to about $160/month. I'm considering switching to Verizon Fios service, since they recently finished running all the wires in my apartment building. The package I'm looking at is TV+net access at 15 mbps, comes to about $90/month after equipment. The price is right, and the TV has more HD than my current plan, but I'm concerned that the drop in net speed will get on my nerves. Unfortuantely, I have no experience to base the decision on.

The heaviest thing I do online is streaming movies and my magic-jack phone. Will 15 mbps be enough for things like that to run smoothly?

I don't like my current job in any part. My duties are basically "office manager" for several locations in the DC area. But the people I work for/with are the biggest bunch of buttholes, idiots, and liars that I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. On top of this typical hassle, the operation is set up in such a way that my department can do our function perfectly 999999 out of 1000000, but that 1 time...we'll hear about it for months, no matter how trivial the error.

And things are only going to get worse, budget cuts are on the near horizon, and the other department heads already like to pick on our group as a drain on their budget. Ridiculous BS, we are the 2nd most efficient group in teh company, and we have the numbers to prove it, not that that matters any. I would love to tell them where to stick this job. But I'm afraid I'm just letting normal office crap get to me, and that it will be no better or even worse somewhere else. That's if I can even get another job.

So whaddaya think? Should I hit the bricks and take my chances with unemployment, or stick it out and be miserable?

If it matters, I have a wide range of experience in many different job fields, a BS in Math, and a "Secret" clearance level.

In his wonderful "Foundation" stories, Isaac Asimov invented a fake mathematics called psychohistory that could predict the course of human civilization very acurately over the course of thousands of years. It only worked on huge groups of people, individuals were too random to be predicted accurately. But large groups of people averaged out, and showed predictable trends.

I see nothing wrong with the logic of that. Can you? Could we predict human behaviour, in groups, the way we predict the weather? Look for patterns of certain situations and the following outcomes. "The humidity is high and the temperature is low, so we will get snow." "Unemployment is high and education is under-funded, so crime will rise"

I have a dual output video card going to two monitors. I would like to watch a video in one window while running a program in the other. But whenever I try that with a program (usually a game) that runs in full-screen, I lose the video on the other monitor. Not picture, I can still see my open windows and run any programs I like, just the video in the player. The audio continues fine, but the video just goes blank.

Any ideas on how to fix this? I don't have a clue even where to start.

Don't really care about getting into proper shape, I'm healthy enough in general. But I just got some cruise tickets to the Caribbean as a gift, and I'd like to not overhang my swim trunks quite so much as I do at the moment.

I have access to a basic gym, but I know myself well enough to know that I won't be able to stick to a very strict diet or hardcore exercise routine.

So, any tricks to slim my belly?

i have a dual-output video card and 2 montiors. When I'm not working, I like to run a video while surfing or playing on the other screen. But whenever I try to play a game that runs in full-screen, i lose the video on the second montior. The video player is still running, I can hear the sound, and still see the border of the program if it happened to be up at the time, but the video just goes black. I've tried several diffeent media player programs (windows media, VLC, and several other freebies), and they all behave the same.

Any tips to try and get my computer to let me do what I want in my free time?

I just moved to a new city with an excellent public transport system. I expect that my car will be sitting in the aprking garage for weeks at a time between drives, possibly even a month at a time. I know that you are supposed to drain the fluids and what-not when storing a car for a long time, but then i wouldn't be able to use my car with out a lot of prep work.

What can I do to keep my inactive car in good shape, but still be able to drive it on demand?

Yes, I know, gross. But it's really been stuck in my head for a while now.

If you eat another human, it's all meat, so you wouldn't be getting any of the vitamins or minerals which come from fruits and vegetables. But on the other hand, shouldn't a human body have, by definition, all the elements a human body needs?

Let's say you had a very small, isolated country, which was very wealthy for it's size. I'm basically picturing Switzerland, but on an island instead of in the mountains.

This country is rich enough, that it has to be worried about being attacked/invaded, but small enough that it really can't put up a standing army of signifigant size for defense.

What if they instead set aside a truly obscene amount of money, and make it known that they will pay out huge bounties to anyone who eliminates a plausible threat to the country? A foreign dictator declares war on "Imagi-Nation", and they put a billion dollar price on his head. A religious zealot plans a terrorist attack, $10 million dollar bounty for proof of both death and violent intent.

I think it makes economic sense, just look at the budgets real countries pour into military spending. What I'm not sure about is if it would be effective. Would the people able to pull off the assasinations be motivated by the money? Would

In every government I'm aware of citizenship is at least partially automatic. If nothing else, the children of citizens are citizens by default.

What if you made citizenship a privlege that had to worked for, maintained, and coudl be revoked? You would have two segments of the population, citizens and residents. Residents can not vote and are entitled only to basic human rights, with no gaurantee of any government services or support. Citizines would have all the normal rights of citizens, voting, police protection, etc. As well as all the normal obligations of jury duty and the like. Only adults who went thru the approval process would be eligible for citizenship, which would invovle signing a contract/oath to the laws and principles of the land.

I think this would mean a better, more involved and participatory government, because only the people who wanted it bad enough to go thru the process would be a "real" part of the country.

Most modern forms of capital punishment ruin the body for transplants. The organs are useless, either fried by electricity, or flooded with poison. This is a shameful waste when thousands of people are waiting for life-saving transplants.

I think we should switch to "bleeding" (or some more politically acceptable name) as the main means of execution. It would be painless, a small needle poke, and then a soft drift into unconciuosness before death, not very much different from the procedure for donating blood. Once the convict dies of blood loss, the organs can be harveted jsut the same as any other cadaver, and the blood itself can even be used. As an added benefit, the procedure is easily reversible almost up to the last second, compared to, say, lethal injection. Just in case a last minute pardn is a few minutes late.

Setting aside the major issue of wether capital punishment itself shoudl be allowed or not, woudln't bleeding be a superior execution in almsot every way?