Just get a 120 or 250 GB on sale for your OS and applications. Keep your data on a traditional HDD.

It's worth it dude. Trust me. The upgrade to SSD was the most noticeable single component upgrade I've ever done to one of my machines.

It was said well before the founding fathers, and if you had any knowledge of early US history you would know that our forefathers believed very strongly in an armed populace to keep crime, the wilderness, and the government in check.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat

Nerds read books. Girls, on average, are more open to and less likely to get harassed for being nerdy than boys are. Case closed.

I.e. diminishing returns.

The higher you raise corporate taxes, the more inventive ways large profitable companies are going to find to avoid them. So we end up taxing the crap out of small players that can't afford to globablize (and are a small percentage of oerall tax revenue), while the big boys just offshore their financials. If the USA were to lower corporate taxes 80-90% it probably wouldn't be worth the effort for a lot of companies to maintain foreign entities to get the tax benefits. This might make for an interesting economics investigation...

And they might as well throw in The Hobbit movies along with em. SO BORING!

A $15 propane tank is a lot smaller liability than a $10,000 battery pack.

I think the problem is more related to the use of catalytic converters and 4 stroke engines rather than public transportation.

Disagree about peak efficiency. In my experience testing PSUs, it is normally found around 90% load. Newer PSUs have gotten a lot better and enhancing efficiency at lower load levels, but PSUs still work most efficiently when running near the load they are designed for.

Newegg's calculator is a joke. It drastically overestimates requirements so they can pimp massive PSUs with higher profit margins. I suggest adding up the various component manufacturer specifications (i.e. max power draw of the MB, GPU(s), HDD(s), DIMM(s), and CPU(s)) and throw in 10-15 W for overhead, then buy a decent PSU with a load rated as close to that number as you can get. Even with a dual GPU setup, you are VERY unlikely to exceed 400W of DC power draw. My current mid-range single GPU system draws around 200W under load (gaming).

Yup. And at 80% efficiency, 300W at the wall means the components are only pulling 240W of DC power...

I used to test server and PC power supplies for a living (until 2009). I do NOT recommend running at 50% load unless your PSU is a cheap turd and you are worried (rightfully so) about component failure. 80-90% load will give you better efficiency, a higher power factor, and less harmonics. Fyi, as a residential electricity customer you don't really have to worry about power factor or harmonics much but large companies can be charged by the utilities for abusing the infrastructure with a ton of shitty/under-utilized PSUs. Since the company I used to work for sold into enterprise, we were very interested in PSU performance and matching up components for efficiency.

At home, I run a decent 350W PSU now, and my system draws about 200W of DC power under load (i.e. gaming) with my components (single Intel 2500K CPU, 8GB RAM, ATI 7870 GPU. 1 HDD and 1 SSD) and around 130W when surfing the web or working. I literally couldn't find a decent, well priced PSU with lower DC power output when I built the machine 18 months ago. It cracks me up when I see guys putting 700W power supplies into their gaming rigs that never draw more than 300W (and none seem to understand the difference between AC power draw from the wall and DC power draw of the components in their system, which is what the PSUs are rated for). It's basically flushing money down the toilet in multiple ways.

Just my $0.02...

FWIW, I think you are making some over generalizations about Sony, Japan, and the history of tech innovation.

I know you got modded up for being funny but this is seriously how it works...

Or so I thought. In 2007 they sent me two DMCA notices and shut off my internet twice in one week. The second time they said "if it happens again, we will revoke your account." I said go for it. I can always get high speed internet from one of the other 4 providers available at my house. I kept downloading and never heard from them again.

To me, the lesson of the story is that the ISPs are willing to hassle their infringing customers to the point of making their service slightly inconvenient, but as soon as you threaten to take away their $40/month, they back down.

It is only at historically low levels if you look at the "official" numbers which report ~2% inflation. If you look at CPI inflation, which takes gas, food, and the things that normal people actually buy (vs multi-millionaires' investments and employee salaries) into consideration, inflation is currently around 6% and has spiked over 10% during the last 4-5 years.

It's not a pretty picture and a topic that the federal reserve and politicians (other than a few independents) have been avoiding like the plague. As someone that drives V-8 (well mostly ride a motorcycle now because gas is so expensive) and worked in grocery stores for years, I am particularly sensitive to price increases in those areas and they have been pretty intense.

Don't be fooled by government statistics, just take a picture of 100 random items in a grocery store this week and check again in a year. Even with all the government subsidies on our food, they will average much more than a 2% increase in twelve months.

Sorry, but judging things is a fundamental human right. This is something that I have found largely misunderstood by my Chinese friends. They will say things like "There is no difference between the US government and the Chinese government, both are corrupt." While I agree with the corruption (although it is a much more straightforward sort in China), I think they miss a key element in the United States, i.e. we enjoy certain inalienable rights that they don't understand the benefit of, largely because they have never had them.

Americans, and really everyone in western style democracies are free to criticize and judge any government, religion, or belief they want to in a public forum. This is freedom of speech and it is the most important right we have.