Thursday, January 16, 2003

Asus A7N8X

Since it's been a year since I last updated my motherboard / cpu / memory... it's time to start looking again for this year's upgrade. (Last year I bought a AthlonXP 1800 with 512Mb PC2100 for maybe $500-$600.) According to the chart I have, PC2100 supposedly has 2.1GB/s of bandwidth.

This year, I'm looking at the Asus motheboard which supports PC2700 (2.7GB/s) with the added fun that you can setup the DDR memory to be "dual'd" which boosts the bandwidth to 5.4GB/s (I only expect a 50-66% boost, not 100%) - that should boost memory performance from 50-125%. Coupling that with an AMD Athlon XP 2400+, which should be about 33% faster then last year. A rough guess puts the overall performance increase somewhere around 30-50%.

$160 - Asus A7N8X (review by Tom's Hardware)
$200 - AMD Athlon XP 2400+?? (2600+ is $300)
$360 - 2x512Mb, Corsair 184-pin DIMM, DDR333 SDRAM, 512MB, 64Mx64, CL2.0

Mmmm, total of $720. I could cut that by $140 if I only go with 2x256Mb of memory. However, I'm replacing a 1Ghz Athlon system with 768Mb memory (my 2nd game PC which is 2-3 years old), so I'd like to go with the full 1Gb of memory.

posted by Wuphon's at 3:19 PM

Monday, January 13, 2003

Name that year

They have used the war to add unlimited billions to a debt which was already the highest we have ever known. And they have just used the war to justify the restriction of congressional power, and the assumption of dictatorial procedures on the part of the president and his appointees.

2001? 2002? ... nope, 1941 it's an excerpt from a speech by Charles Lindbergh in Des Moine, Iowa in September 1941.

Transcript notes (errors):

1) But they believed that this country could be entered into the war in very much the same way we were entered into the last one. - "entered" should be replaced with "enticed" according to the recording of the speech that I have heard.

2) But almost as fast as fighting planes were turned out from our factories, ... - Lindberg says "... almost as soon, almost as fast as ..."

3) the American army has a few hundred thoroughly modern bombers and fighters - should be "has only a few"

posted by Wuphon's at 8:18 PM (0 comments)

Sunday, January 12, 2003

DOW 8800

Well, it's been a rough year for investments... or a very good year to make investments (a bad year for reaping). I'm of the dollar cost-averaging school of investing. Putting the same amount away every month, in the same funds (with appropriate diversification) so that when prices are down I buy a larger quantity and when prices rise I buy lesser quantities. Right now, the outlook seems to be that the DOW won't be hitting 10,000 again for 2-4 years -- which means we're in for a long period of sideways movement in the stock market. (Which is actually what I expected to happen since about 2 years ago.) I lost around 17-20% of my portfolio value this year, but the major indexes fared worse... so I'm not too terribly upset. So, we'll see where the market is in 2-4 years - in the meantime, I'm going to be slowly socking away money for retirement, slowly and steadily.

posted by Wuphon's at 8:38 PM (0 comments)

First legal summons for Clonaid

Well, it looks like the locale where they first broke the news has decided that it has jurisdiction over the matter and has ordered the parties involved to appear in its courts. (Clonaid seems to have been specifically setup as a corporation to avoid this type of legal troubles - I forget where they're based.) However, either the court is overstepping its jurisdictional authority, or Clonaid's lawyers aren't as smart as they think they are.

Yahoo! News - Clonaid Summoned on 'Cloned Girl'

Clonaid Summoned on 'Cloned Girl'
Sat Jan 11, 7:47 PM ET

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - An executive with the company that claims to have produced a human clone was subpoenaed Saturday to appear in court, and the company was ordered to disclose the whereabouts of the baby girl and her mother.

The witness subpoena and summons were approved by a court at the request of attorney Bernard Siegel, who has filed a lawsuit asking the state to appoint a guardian for the child, the attorney said.
The papers were delivered to Thomas Kaenzig, a Clonaid vice president, before he spoke at the Money World 2003 conference in Fort Lauderdale, Siegel said.

posted by Wuphon's at 7:39 AM (0 comments)