When will people learn that Best Buy is not a place to take a non-working computer.
Do the same thing you do if your car is not running good. You ask some friends for referrals, call a local computer shop and ask some questions, do a quick check on the Better BusinessBureau to make sure they are legit and take it to them.
When you drop it off get an idea of what kind of upfront charges there are. Then tell them not to fix a thing until they have an exact price for the repair. Get a date when you can call them to see how things are going with the computer. Once you know how much it is going to be think it over for an hour before saying yes. If it is way up there consider cutting your losses and getting a new computer.
If you do decide to get a new computer have them do a data backup of your old files so you have them for the new computer. If the hard drive is the problem your files may not be accessible. But you can always get a second opinion.
Nick Tosches from Vanity Fair wrote a great article on his hunt for information about the picture "autumn" which is a background on all Windows Xp computers.
The fear mongering Department of Homeland Security has some new safety pictures. These pictures are for people who can't read a normal warning sign, unfortunately the signs can be interpreted as meaning all kinds of different things.
If you are in the middle of a war would you send 363 tons of of cash into the warzone you are fighting in? (cash as in greenbacks, cash as in the paper money we use everyday)
Well the Federal reserve loaded the 363 tons of cash on pallets and sent it to Iraq and now most of the money can't be accounted for. For those of you who don't know how much money is in 363 tons of cash it roughly 4 Billion. Yes 4 Billion with a capital B, as in $4B
The only glimmer of goodness in this story is that it was Iraq's money and not the U.S. Taxpayers. But then again this is one more reason for the Iraqis to hate the U.S. because we were stupid with their money. After reading the article the excuse they gave was "we were in the middle of a war we could'nt use proper accounting techniques"
Seems the U.S. is building a big ass embassy (104 acres) in Baghdad. I don't recall ever wanting a 104 acre embassy in Iraq do you? Oh yea it's costing $592 million.
John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University has done some number crunching on what we the people of the USA could have done with the trillion dollars spent on the Iraq war.
The Treasury could have used the money to mail a check for more than $3,000 to every man, woman and child in the United States.
If the money was spent in an even more ecumenical way and a global mailing list was available, the Treasury could have sent a check for more than $150 to every human being on earth.
The annual budget of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, which is approximately $670 million, or about two-thirds of $1 billion. The Iraq War has cost about 1,500 NHTSA's, several of which could probably have reduced the more than 40,000 Americans killed annually on our roads.
If you saw a Lite Brite sign showing a cartoon character would you think it was a bomb?
Well some idiot hit the panic button in Boston when a bunch of LED signs showed up around town. Turns out it was a promotion for some cartoon show and nothing else. The city said it spent in between $500,000- $1M investigating it. More info here or here.
The lite brite boards had been placed in 10 cities, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, to promote the late-night cartoon and a coming film. The light boards had been in place for two to three weeks, and there had been no complaints from other cities, she said.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me sad about the state of fear in America right now. This is exactly the kind of thing real terrorist organizations want. They want us to be scared of everything and anything and in turn continue to scare lawmakers into taking more Civil liberties away from the American Public. By doing this the terrorist will have won and they did'nt even need to crash any planes or plant any bombs. Another example - How about the numerous F-16 Fighter jets and Blackhawk helicopters flying around the Super Bowl this week in Miami. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
