Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?)
On 18/12/2008, at 11:46 AM, dsummersmi...@comcast.net wrote: The recovery was caused by two things: Putin controlling the mob so businessmen knew who to bribe, and the rise in fuel costs. But, the last 4 years, as he consolidated his power, he also concentrated the wealthI don't think anyone would argue that Russia is not a more autocratic country than it was even 4 years ago. These types of countries rarely have well off citizens. More than that, why are there so many Russian ex-pats, well-educated, doing menial jobs in tourist resorts? 'cause it's better than no job in Russia. Charlie. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Belgian Beer (was Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?))
Wayne wrote: 5. The nicest beer I ever had the pleasure of drinking was in Russia. It was a Belgian brew and I wish I remembered the brand name. I know it betrays my Irish-ness, but I think the Belgians make the best beers. Chimay, Corsendonk, Maredsous...all delicious and with some fairly high alcohol contents to boot, which is a bit of a bonus I must admit. I like their Trippels the best, but YMMV. Jim Beer snob Maru Debt Consolidation Lower your debt by up to 50%. Click here to find out how. http://tagline.excite.com/fc/BK72PcZaafJZOMSsj7EE4r0dyhtS4pKIFviZ7lGh81I4M4X8l5e3Qg/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Incoming!
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: At 09:02 PM Wednesday 12/17/2008, Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Dec 17, 2008, at 3:05 PM, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: Shoe-fly pie. Your fly is open. No it's not. I'm not even wearing pants. Possibly TMI Maru Oh. That reminds me, I need to get a couple of kilts out of the washer and hang them up to dry Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Belgian Beer (was Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?))
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 6:08 AM, Jim Sharkey templar...@excite.com wrote: I know it betrays my Irish-ness, but I think the Belgians make the best beers. Ah, well, then I have to share a joke often told by a Fitzgerald friend of mine. An Irishman walks out of a bar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It could happen! Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Irregulars questions on DTV conversion
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 8:02 PM, Ronn! Blankenship ronn_blankens...@bellsouth.net wrote: (2) Will a computer with a TV tuner card pick up the digital signal (without further modification), or would it either require a converter box in the line or have to be connected to cable? And does anyone have any recommendations for such cards, particularly (if it makes a difference) ones which will turn an existing PC into a DTV-ready TV set? Cable is supposed to continue offering analog signals, as I understand it, so the old cards (and TVs) will work with it. I have several DTV receivers for PCs. I have one from ADS Tech (Instant TV HD), which died a yaer or so after I bought it. So I won't recommend that. I also have a Pinnacle USB gizmo (PCTV 800e), which seems to work okay. I imagined I would use it with my laptop, but now I know that most laptops don't have the graphics power to do HDTV very well. So I have the Pinnacle USB gizmo plugged into our living room media computer. When it works it is fine, but sometimes the drivers seem to crash when it starts recording. Luckily, though, I also have a DTV receiver card in that computer (so that in theory, it can record two shows at once and it sometimes actually does). The card is an AverMedia M780. I'm using SnapStream Beyond TV for schedule info, recording, etc. It came with one of the cards. All of these were the cheapest stuff I could find. I think I got the dead one at CompUSA when they were going out of business. It worked for a while. We don't watch much TV... well, actually, lately, we've fallen back into the habit somewhat, but we mostly record movies and how-to shows. We rarely watch anything live. No cable, just an antenna. Speaking of antennas, if you go that route, you may want to replace any splitters you have in your cable. I had really lousy signal strength until I replaced a splitter, after noticing in the store that new splitters are rated up to higher frequencies. Or maybe it was just that the splitter was old. Who knows, but after I replaced it, we had far more channels and stronger signals, which in DTV means less jerks. Except the ones who host Fox news talk shows, of course. We get 40 or 50 channels here in the South Bay. A lot of them are redundant most of the time and many are in languages I don't understand (tempted to refer to Fox news again), but there's a lot to choose from even without cable. Alas, we are going to get cable again soon, I guess. I'm moving everything off my home server to a hosted solution and dumping DSL and our home phone line in favor of cable, which should be cheaper, faster and maybe, just maybe more reliable (we have a noisy phone line). Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Russia (Was What is wealth?)
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of Charlie Bell Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 4:51 AM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?) On 18/12/2008, at 11:46 AM, dsummersmi...@comcast.net wrote: The recovery was caused by two things: Putin controlling the mob so businessmen knew who to bribe, and the rise in fuel costs. But, the last 4 years, as he consolidated his power, he also concentrated the wealthI don't think anyone would argue that Russia is not a more autocratic country than it was even 4 years ago. These types of countries rarely have well off citizens. More than that, why are there so many Russian ex-pats, well-educated, doing menial jobs in tourist resorts? 'cause it's better than no job in Russia. And I bet it's not just the usual theater majors doing menial jobs while waiting for their break (father of a theater major sighs). I've read that the Greek riots are tied to this type of problem; there are no/very few good jobs available for college graduates there. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Irregulars questions on DTV conversion
On Dec 18, 2008, at 11:28 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: Speaking of antennas, if you go that route, you may want to replace any splitters you have in your cable. I had really lousy signal strength until I replaced a splitter, after noticing in the store that new splitters are rated up to higher frequencies. Or maybe it was just that the splitter was old. Who knows, but after I replaced it, we had far more channels and stronger signals, which in DTV means less jerks. Except the ones who host Fox news talk shows, of course. Can vouch for upgrading the splitters, especially if the ones in the existing wiring are really old. Digital TV does require pretty serious bandwldth, and to get the signal through to where the TV can receive it cleanly, splitters and cabling need to be rated up into the GHz range. If the cable is old and ratty, it's worth pulling it out and replacing it, too. (Cable TV companies are known for cutting out old cable and running new cable drops on new installations, specifically because old cable is usually degraded/damaged and tends to have impedance bumps in it that can make even analog signals look like the old days of rabbit ears.) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Irregulars questions on DTV conversion
And while I'm on this thread .. Having experienced both analog and digital broadcast TV, there's one thing about analog that I'm really going to miss. Analog signals are more readable under weak signal conditions than digital -- digital has a better quality picture as long as the bitstream is coming through intact, but it doesn't take much of a bit error rate to start showing compression artifacts, and not much above that, bam! no more signal. Ask any ham operator familiar with ATV what they mean by the P0-P5 scale of picture quality .. P0-P1 is such poor quality the broadcasters won't stand for it, but if it will hold sync on the TV at least, you can at least read callsign cards and have some idea of what's in the image even through horrendous amounts of noise, and P2- P3 signals are good enough to be able to get useful info from the video even if they look terrible. Where this really becomes a major concern is how well DTV gets emergency info into areas that need it quickly, for example, towns in the path of a tornado passing through a station's reception footprint. Analog broadcast can get into those areas even if they're outside the B-contour of the station, at least for a visible enough signal to get the warning. DTV has a sharper cutoff below minimal *broadcast quality* signal strength, and the signal gets unintelligible a lot faster as it degrades than analog does, mainly because while our eyes can adjust for noisy analog signals quite well, they're not evolved to adjust for scrambled compressed digital images. If the LPTV and translator licensing business weren't so colossally screwed up (mainly from application-spamming by a certain extremely aggressive religious group that's so flooded the FCC with LPTV/ translator applications that they literally don't know which way is up with them right now!), I'd say LPTV would be the niche for analog broadcast to fill the gap on this. But because it's not possible for *anyone* to get an LPTV or translator license right now, we're stuck with the high-power migration to DTV with no workaround. There are people in local and state emergency management treating this as a serious potential issue right now .. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: Pre-readers?
Hi Brinellers. I recall that some of you were excellent manuscript pre-readers in times past (Julia?) Are any of you interested in doing it again? This time it would be for the first novel of my wife, Cheryl, who's done a 100kword SF novel that's somewhat YA and feminine in tone, about a girl trying to make it while her nation is in a WW-I like turmoil on a colony world. It's lovely and thoughtful and could use a few more perceptive eyes. Contact me at davidb...@sbcglobal.net Oh, I have been posting a series of Suggestions to Obama at http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/ Here's hoping you are all thriving, that your holidays are joyous, and that we get a civilization to be proud-of. david b ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?)
On 19/12/2008, at 5:47 AM, Dan M wrote: More than that, why are there so many Russian ex-pats, well-educated, doing menial jobs in tourist resorts? 'cause it's better than no job in Russia. And I bet it's not just the usual theater majors doing menial jobs while waiting for their break (father of a theater major sighs). I've read that the Greek riots are tied to this type of problem; there are no/very few good jobs available for college graduates there. No, by well-educated I mean professionals - accountants, lawyers, medics etc. Cyprus was full of them working bar, waiting, or worse being exploited in strip clubs. (It wasn't like London where an attractive woman could make good money doing exotic dancing a couple of times a week - these girls were often being forced to have sex with customers). Charlie. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?)
Dan M. wrote: I would have thought that a low birth rate is very very good evidence of being part of the first world. It does have that in common with the first world. But, the life expectancy of both men and women in every age catagory is less than it was 40 years ago. And how can we trust communist statistics? Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Belgian Beer (was Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?))
Jim wrote: I know it betrays my Irish-ness, but I think the Belgians make the best beers. Well, now they make Budweiser too so there is no accounting for taste... - jmh ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Russia (Was What is wealth?)
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 6:00 PM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?) Dan M. wrote: I would have thought that a low birth rate is very very good evidence of being part of the first world. It does have that in common with the first world. But, the life expectancy of both men and women in every age catagory is less than it was 40 years ago. And how can we trust communist statistics? By secondary measure, of course. :-) If you want to argue that things were worse than the official statistics under the USSR, you won't find a debate opponent in me. But, after the USSR fell, a lot of data became available. The person who wrote the paper in question is an old lion of polisci, and has a great reputation. And, he is publishing in a very anti-Communist journal. So, I'd be shocked if he just took stock communist statistics without using secondary data. It could be that the fall wasn't as great as he portrayed, but men use to live longer, on average, than 60 years. Over 70 or so years of Communist rule, demographic errors of that magnitude become to big to miss. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Belgian Beer (was Re: Russia (Was What is wealth?))
On 18 Dec 2008, at 14:08, Jim Sharkey wrote: Wayne wrote: 5. The nicest beer I ever had the pleasure of drinking was in Russia. It was a Belgian brew and I wish I remembered the brand name. I know it betrays my Irish-ness, but I think the Belgians make the best beers. Chimay, Corsendonk, Maredsous...all delicious and with some fairly high alcohol contents to boot, which is a bit of a bonus I must admit. I like their Trippels the best, but YMMV. Czech beer is very very good. And it costs less than coffee or Coke in Prague. Bohemian Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : w...@wtgab.demon.co.uk Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ “Babies are born every day without an iPod. We will get there.” - Adam Sohn, the head of public relations for Microsoft’s Zune division. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
