depending on where you live, even in the US, you want to build an addition to you house, go right ahead. a lot of the country does not have zoning laws

Talk about bricking your device!

The same thing happened with HP/UX 9. HP tried all sorts of things, including free consulting to get customers to upgrade to 10.x, but the don't-fix-what-isn't-broken crowd kept driving their dump trucks to Cupertino. They finally ended it by pointing out that there was no way to make it Y2K compliant without breaking backwards binary compatibility.

And if you think they will, look at when Microsoft originally wanted to EOL WinXP, and when they actually did.

I just took a 21" CRT to the recycling place. In 1995, it cost about $2200 new. In 2001, my employer gave it to me as scrap when our building was closed and they decided that a lot of that stuff was cheaper to give away than to move to some warehouse across the country. (Plus it was a tiny bit of good will that the local management could show the laid-off employees when the Big Guys were being callous pricks kicking us to the curb while we were still going to 9/11 funerals.)

ObTopic: $400 is an expensive monitor these days, but it wasn't that long ago that $400 wouldn't buy you a useable SVGA monitor.

But the Government doesn't CARE about a level playing field. There are anti-money laundering laws, many of which were the actual original reason for the RICO act in the first place. They don't have to PROVE that you laundered money, just that you set up a system that could, and didn't follow the "Know Your Customer" rules, and things like Dodd Frank (come April 10th). The mere agreeing to setup a system that COULD be used to bypass is enough for you to go away for a LONG LONG LONG time.

"Should have" was meant in the legal way. By building in money laundering without tracking, they ARE in violation of RICO. That means they Can do life without parole, as can anyone who assists, the second the govt decides to crack down. They can say " we don't know" and the govt says "you should,and should have, retroactively" life in jail for not playing the game tends to end this stuff

In addition, they just 'prove' that Bitcoin is being used to circumvent Money Laundering laws, and that the admins SHOULD have known/built tracking in, and they get arrested for RICO act violations, and the founders/admins/server admins, do life in Federal Prison. Lather, rinse, repeat like they did for the mob, and...

Send it to me. I wouldn't mind having a headless <5W NIS server for my home network.

It is when you run old clunky hardware like I do. LXDE runs very nicely on my ten-year-old Dell C640 laptop.

The industry STANDARD is Solidworks, with SOME form of CAM, but it is expensive, and the CAM side of the house can get crazy, depending on what features you want/need to support. High speed machining? 3+ axis profiling? etc. The HUGE advantage, if you are a student, you can get it CHEAP, and even better, if your school picks it up/you have access to their validation server it can be free. Going into the pro world, this is the one they will probably expect you to know
Best for money/easiest? I went Alibre enterprise, but the CAM it ships with is somewhat limited, but it may be enough for what you want to do. Bobcad/cam is another product where I own a seat, but it didn't work the way I thought. Rhino gets good reviews, and is supposedly fairly easy

IF you have the funds, and are starting from scratch, and want you knowledge to be industry applicable, get Solidworks (for the amount I spend on a full up Bobcad, Alibre, and CAM, I probably could have done this, and even if it was extra, I wish I did). There is a real cheap version of Alibre, see if you like it (I also think there is a 30 day trial of the full up version)

Oh, one huge advantage/disadvantage of Alibre - they use the directX libraries vs (gad, can't remember what the high end cads - had 3 teeth pulled today, and drugged off my mind). The GOOD thing is that you don't need to run a workstation level graphics card - just a good 'regular' card, like you would do for a business or gaming PC.

Too true. 6500K CFLs are so "cold" looking that they make me shiver.

The problem I have with Crees is th form factor. We have recessed lighting in our kitchen, mostly R30, and the fixtures are 40 years old, certainly superseded by newer standards. Regular R-30 bulbs fit perfectly. The Cree equivalents take some work to fit right, especially the ones with the built-in bezels.

That said, I love the light they produce. It's a bit brighter, and only slightly whiter than the light the 65W incandescents put out, at a fifth the power consumption.

I have one question for the pick-your-color manufacturers: Have you ever consulted an interior designer? The colors of paint, fabric, etc. in a room are all picked with specific lighting in mind, both natural and from lamps. Start futzing with it, and things will start looking crappy. Ever wonder why a hotel room looks fine under CFLs but the same CFLs in your bedroom make everything an ashy grey? It's because the colors in the hotel room were picked specifically because they complement the color spectrum put out by the CFLs.

I'm looking forward to the day not far off when I can have all LED lighting in the house, but I have no desire to make radical color changes (except for special applications people have mentioned ike aids for the deaf).

IBM support still sucks. You spend more time proving to them that you're entitled to support than you spend getting support. Customer number? Site code? How about I give you the number of dollars we've sent you, and then we can talk about how you can't find those other numbers in your system.

I went through this yet again earlier this week. At one point I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, "Four months ago, my company wrote you an eight-figure check for worldwide licensing and support. If that's not in your database, maybe you should switch to Oracle."