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{{User:Arthur Smart/userboxes/no gun}} '''Update:''' The reaction to this userbox has been generally predictable. One <s>wingnut</s> WN presumed that the userbox applied specifically to him/her, in effect ] a direct connection where none exists. (I guess the shoe fit, even if the condom didn't.) Yet she/he claims that ownership of a copy of ]'s book '']'' is in no way connected to the ] who owned the book and told police "that all liberals should be killed" and "that because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them into office." The aforementioned WN sees a direct connection where none exists, and doesn't see a connection that is as plain as day. The scary thing is that it's WNs like her/him who own guns and promote ownership.
Another WN even went so far as to point me to an article about a mass murderer who killed 16 school children using four handguns. Yet he/she seemed to be trying to convince me that handguns are a '''good''' thing. Very scaaaaarrrry.
Yes, the above userbox was inspired by gun-toting arch-conservative WNs who seem to get off on hating liberals. The good news is that in their arch-conservative <s>circle jerks</s> discussions, they no doubt use much ] than ] used.
No, the book didn't '''cause''' Adkisson to commit his murders, but it certainly did help to '''inspire''' him ... just as wingnuts '''inspire''' me to create userboxes.
== Last Month's Userbox of the Month ==
== Last Month's Userbox of the Month ==
Revision as of 06:56, 8 August 2008
Userboxes
UBX
This user hopes you read each and every one of his userboxes! or else...
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Why our family supports PBS — Just over a year ago, we invested in a new entertainment system (plasmaHDTV, TiVo, etc.). We're still getting by with rabbit ears, due to our proximity to the Houston-area transmitter towers. We don't want cable or dish, because our three kids watch too many cartoons as it is with broadcast television; can't imagine if we had Cartoon Network. But after a year of enjoying all the great digital programming we get, it dawned on me that we were watching more and more PBS, and less and less of everything else. I felt guilty not having financially supported PBS in recent years. Time to change all that. But how much to contribute?
As an engineer, I decided to use the TiVo Season Pass feature to quantify how much PBS we actually watch each week. Here is the Excel workbook I came up with. The first spreadsheet ("PBS Content") allowed me to calculate that we watch an average of 23.1 hours per week of PBS programming. Subtracting roughly 5 promotional minutes per hour at the end of each show leaves a net of 21.2 hours per week of PBS programming.
The second spreadsheet ("Costs") shows that if we contribute a penny per minute, that 21.2 hours per week comes to US$665.01 for the 366-day calendar year of 2008. That same spreadsheet shows that if we assume a 5-year life for the plasma TV and TiVo box, then our PBS subscription is almost exactly half our total cost of television annually. That may seem a bit steep, but read on:
I really would have thought that with a TiVo box, we would have ended up watching more and more commercial TV, since TiVo lets us blow right past commercials, not to mention the ubiquitous teasers that immediately preceed them. But with the breathtaking quality of digital HDTV, and the utterly quality programming on PBS these days, the exact opposite has been true. My Season Pass spreadsheet shows that a whopping 40% of all our TV watching is on PBS, and the remaining 60% covers all other broadcast television combined. I was amazed. I feel really good about our US$665.01 contribution to PBS this year. At a penny a minute, it's definitely an excellent bargain.
We are continuing to discover excellent new PBS programs that we've added to our TiVo Season Passes. So I have no doubt that next year's contribution will be even higher. Again, it is truly a bargain.
Here's a little something from Talk:2000#Y2K and Computers, which I can't resist the self-aggrandizing temptation to repeat here:
Y2K and Computers
As a comment to a recent edit, Moncrief wrote "MOST computers 'thought' it was 1900?? Huh? The problems were fixed by changing to four digits. And computers can't think anyway. WTF?????" Agreed. Computers can't think.
I began my computer programming career in 1971 on a DECPDP-8 having a whopping 8K of memory. (Not 8 gig, not 8 meg, that's 8K. Not even RAM, that was magnetic core memory. No hard drive, not even floppies, it used magnetic tape and punched-hole paper tape. Took a half hour to compile a decent-sized program.) Back in 1971, the year 2000 was a distant dream. Two digits were plenty to record the year in a date/timestamp.
Fast-forward to the year 2001, when I visited my old home town and happened to bump into someone who "inherited" my software after I had left that job. She commented in a mildly critical tone, "You know, that software you wrote wasn't Y2K compliant." I said, "You mean that old software I wrote more than a quarter of a century ago is still being used today?"
Yes, my software wasn't Y2K compliant. Foolish me for assuming that it would either be scrapped, replaced or at least overhauled in 25+ years.
The DEC PDP-8? That got replaced by a PDP-11, then a Vax, then a who knows what (an Alpha?). As for DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), it got bought by Compaq, which got bought by HP. The workplace itself changed ownership a couple of times, too.
But my old Fortran code was still chugging along, even if it wasn't Y2K compliant. -- Art Smart (talk) 12:07, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
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