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AK_Thug AMish

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Posts posted by AK_Thug AMish

  1. ohmy.gif Doesn't the American government give subsidies to people that go to universities? I thought there was also some sort of college funding?

    In theory, yes... in reality, not unless you are lucky.

    For students in some states (Florida and Georgia come to mind, I'm sure there are other states which support higher education), it is quite cheap to go to an in-state public school. That is, < $2,000 tuition a year, not including ~ $10,000 housing/food/books/living expenses. However, in most poorer states, it is much harder to get any kind of help. You can only get FAFSA funds if you are really poor, or have multiple siblings also in college. Merit scholarships are few and far between.

    I worked very hard in high school, and I recieved only one scholarship, to U of Florida (very odd). Basically, I just barely dodged a massive financial shafting. I did every #@(@! thing they wanted in High school (above 4 pt GPA with advanced classes, two sports, >200 hrs volunteer service, leadership stuff, etc), but received absolutely nothing from any school besides UF. So yes, I am mad... I did not want to decide my university on money... I'm going to my 5th choice school (which is a good school anyways, but I didn't want to travel across the country). :king:

  2. Sports have definitely helped me socially, I went into high school pretty insecure, shy, with few friends, and slightly chubby. Cross country taught me a lot about myself, how to push myself, train hundreds of miles to drop my time and not only make my goals but accomplish things I never even thought about (like going to states), all the mean-while, making very good friends who you can trust to leave it all on the cross-country course like you since they did all that with you. I think it is important to do something physical in your life... for me running keeps everything balanced. Of course, inter-school sports aren't for everyone, but I believe working hard and accomplishing goals is very important in life. I hate to see many local schools having to switch to pay-to-play policies, I probably wouldn't have joined 5 years ago if that was the case for me.

    On the other hand, some sports like football are grossly over-funded. Schools do not need snazzy new uniforms or huge stadiums, high school sports are played for the game, not any fame for crying-out-loud! Plus, I see way too many people get seriously hurt in football, and 20 years down the road many former players have things like knee problems.

    So, I think the problem in American high schools is two-fold, "glory" sports like football and basketball suck funding away from equally important sports like soccer, Cross, tennis, etc, as well as academic programs. Secondly, education is not nearly high enough a priority in this country!! Our government can spend $185,748,195,000 in Iraq (as of 8/6/05 at least), but refuses to give me a single dollar to go to any public university!! I would have had to pay $20,000 a year to go to Ohio State, and I live in Ohio!! :king:

    So basically, it all boils down to this: In America, our priorities are all off. We'd rather complain about gay people getting married than 15 Americans a week dying in Iraq; we'd rather see our children score a touchdown in a varsity football game than win a match in quizbowl. :o

  3. I bought it as well, and it runs fine! The demo ran fine on my laptop too (medium and low settings), here are my relevent specs:

    Dell i6000

    1.6 GHz Pentium M

    1 GB RAM

    128 MB ATI X300 Mobility

    Lookin' pretty good... if I can get back my long-unused BF1942 skillz I'll be tearing up the battlefield in no time!

  4. I've stuck with Dell for the past few years out of personal preference really... The only other brands I have experience with are Compaq (long time ago had a desktop by them, then it got zapped by a lightening bolt haha) and Gateway, aka my mom's laptop.

    Right now I'm testing another voltage drop (6X at .780V) and the clock says about 3 hours of battery life, under stress. Earlier today my computer got a score of 1,210 with 3dmark05, but I won't really be using it for gaming all the time so thats ok.

    As for another drawback, I might want to add boot-up time. It takes about 60 s average, although I have no other laptops to compare that to.

    €1750? Isn't that about $2000 USD? I guess it depends on the specs, I'm not familiar with IBM's. I do know that they have many business-oriented features, like drop protection (which I wouldn't test), fingerprint scanning security (like some of those USB keys, and other things that I personally don't really need for college.

  5. An brilliant book by Carl Sagan really hits on the notion of UFO's, or more percisely, Aliens visiting our planet. It's titled "the Demon Haunted World" and is really great, goes over science and critical thinking in fantastic detail.

    Basically, he says do not underestimate the human mind's power to deceive itself. Is it i coincidence that most alien/religious sightings (and most hullucinations) happen right after waking?

    OMG, what a great book :rock: I couldn't come close to giving it justice, so really read it yourself!

  6. Any time you see something like "Sir Arthur Keith, evolutionist", you should immediately question the credibility of the source. I normally don't simply attack the authority of quotations, but creationists are particularly bad with properly quoting/understanding the context of 'evolutionist' quotes.

    I second Mythos' link to talk.origins, absolutely fabulous site. Evolution, like any real scientific theory, has its debates, but 99% of creationist arguments are simply based on misunderstandings of biology.

  7. CHM 2045 + CHM 2045L

    That's Chemistry 1 and the 1-credit lab that goes with it at University of Florida, I have no idea how difficult it will be though... I heard it was tough but the course description looks easy enough (I haven't taken Chemistry since Honors Chemistry 2 years ago)

    I've heard the AP Physics test is hard. When we asked our teacher why you only need a 50% to get a 5, he said, "because it's a b**ch", lol. SL Physics for IB is pretty easy, though, I got a 7 :rock:

  8. Sorry it's been so long since I've lurked around in these forums, I now have a full-time job (46 hours a week!) school coming up, running, life, etc etc. Anyways, earlier this summer I made the plunge and bought a new laptop, I thought I would share my experiences for the benefit of those going to college soon or thinking about buying a new computer. I included all the costs not to be snobby but for your information, if you wanted to know how much everything will cost when you make your journey as well :D So, here is my story:

    The Beginning

    At the beginning of summer, I was really debating whether or not to go with laptop or desktop. Desktops are much much cheaper for the same power, and quite upgradable as well. Laptops are obviously portable (or sometimes not, more on this later). I decided to go laptop since I didn't want to be chained down in my dorm room all the time. Looking back, I'm very happy I did, and I would recommend laptop (although I haven't actually gone to college quite yet, leaving in 3 weeks!!). Here's what I decided was important to me beforehand:

    -Windows XP Pro (necessary)

    -Enough power to run decent games, but not with top-of-the-line price

    -128mb graphics card

    -middle priced processor

    -Large screen, but still portable

    -No extra software, such as Office (which I have) or anti-virus protection (Norton/McAffee is way too intrusive for me, plus I use other, free, alternatives+firefox)

    My grandparents offered to pay it in full for my graduation present (yay!), so I went all-out and went with the Dell i9300 which totalled $2,000 (2 yr warranty, $300 rebate included). With that pricetag, they withdrew their offer because they thought laptops cost $500 like they saw in the paper. So, they now offered half (then someone hit my car and I got another $1,000 from insurence, lucky me).

    It was actually a good thing I didn't order the i9300, I had no idea from ordering online how large a 17" laptop really is. It's massive, and not very portable!

    I then settled on the next size down, the Inspiron 6000. A 15.4 inch screen seemed like a nice compromise between size and portability. It's also wide-screen, which took a little getting used to at first, but now I love it.

    Ordering

    I went ahead and customized my laptop. Heres what I went with, and the extra expenses:

    -Intel® Pentium® M Processor 730 (1.60 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB) ($50)

    -Microsoft Windows XP Professional - For networking with work or school [$89]

    -2 yr warranty ($200 I think..)

    -15.4 inch UltraSharp WSXGA+ LCD Panel [$100]

    -1GB DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimms [add $131]

    -128MB DDR ATI's MOBILITY™ RADEON X300 PCI Express x16 Graphics [$60]

    -60GB Hard Drive [$40]

    -24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive

    -6-cell Lithium Ion Battery (53 WHr)

    And that was it for extras.

    I paid a total of about $1,800 with taxes and warranty - $300 rebate. Dell was pretty good about production and shipping (I had free shipping too, saved $50), and everything went ahead of schedule. I recieved my laptop in less than 2 weeks after order confirmation :)

    Setup

    I wish I formatted my hard-drive right away, but I choose to simply un-install all the bloatware that came with my laptop. No XP CD B) , but it does come with a utility to burn your own backup copy so I did (don't pay them $10 for it!). I'm still considering formatting, I don't know if it's still worth it.

    Anyways, I installed all my games and Office, no problems. Wolfenstein: ET had some serious freeze issues, which went away after I updated the ATI drivers (that took an evening, but now I now how to do it). I can run Wolfenstein at about 90 FPS with no action, I normally get around 50 or 60 FPS at normal settings. Thankfully, BF 2 actually runs on my system. I'm still testing it, but I seem to get about 35 FPS on the demo with all the bots at normal settings. :rock: Activision 'recommends' a 256 MB graphics card (yikes!), but 128 ATI x300 + 1GB RAM seems to be enough.

    Another note--try undervolting your laptop. I did it this weekend and everything seems to run much cooler, letting me turn off the fans. It rarely gets much hotter than 34C running idle at full clock speed, and I'm only at 45C after a few hours of gaming. Tuning down the voltage also saves battery life, I seem to be getting about a 1/2 hour more but I haven't really tested this yet. Just use a program like Centrino Hardware Control and thoroughly test every voltage drop with something like prime95 to make sure it's safe. I dropped my full 12X clock speed from 1.308V to 1.100V, and 6X speed from .988V to .924V.

    The screen is great. I use 1680X1050 size (max), everyone else complains about the small text but that can be fixed (ctrl++ on firefox). It is very bright, sometimes too bright and I need to turn it down to rest my eyes. No dead pixels or excessive light leakage, and although I never compared the different screens offered I am quite happy with the $100 upgrade. The wide screen format has a ton of real-estate; it lets me use only half for firefox and the other half for music, word, or whatever else. Great for photoshop too.

    Final Tab

    Good things about Dell i6000:

    -Good keyboard size and response (num-pad and those 6 delete/insert/etc keys are hard to use)

    -Nice-looking case, although the latch doesn't 100% securly fasten the screen down.

    -Nifty glowing front buttons to control WMP (I guess only the volume keys work with other players :D )

    -Good performance if you upgrade a bit

    -Decent price, if you wait for a $600-$750 coupon (check notebookforums.com, dell section to find some)

    -Great screen, with the middle upgrade

    -Better speakers than most laptops (from what I've read at least)

    Drawbacks

    -Not as portable as the 12", or even 14" laptops

    -Not as powerful as some of the 17" models offered, if thats what you want

    -If you only need a laptop for word processing, internet, email.. then it's too much.

    -Runs hot and loud, a little tweaking helps reduce it though.

    Things I did somewhat wrong:

    -Buy RAM from Dell. From what I've heard, its cheaper to just get the 256mb from Dell and order the 1GB from Newegg.com or where ever and then install it yourself.

    -Not get a faster processor (like 1.8 GHz)

    -Get the bigger battery, which gives 5+ hours compared to mine 3.5 - 4 hours

    -I didn't shop around that much, I might have been a little better off with a 14" size like my friends Sony Viao.

    Things I would recommend to do:

    -Shop around. Be patient, and wait for a good deal to come up before purchasing

    -Go to a store like Circuit City and physically hold the laptops you are considering. Pictures online can only give you an idea of the size, dimensions, etc. Check for screen size, keyboard size (the small ones might be a surprise), heat and fan noise, etc.

    -Order online and customize your system so you don't pay for anything you don't want!

    Pictures

    Here are some shots of the computer sitting on top of an old table at my house. Also in the pictures: Microsoft optical mouse (I should have gone with a laptop mouse w/ shorter cord), Bose radio for nice sound, Creative Zen Micro in protective altoid shell, Lexar 512MB JumpDrive Secure.

    resizewizard14uc.th.jpg resizewizard27cu.th.jpg

    resizewizard37ry.th.jpg resizewizard45ea.th.jpg

    Album

    So...

    The great thing about buying laptops today is that there are so many options. Do you want globs of processing power for Unreal and BF 2 FPS glory? Something so monsterous in size and screen resolution that it frightens small children? Or perhaps something that you can actually carry, without all the frills? I went middle-of-the-road, but that's just me. I hope this helps anyone thinking about buying a laptop, but didn't know where to start. Also, check out notebookforums.com if you want to know what some of the techies think.

  9. Yes, it's been awhile since I posted here...

    but I did purchase a Creative Zen Micro two weeks ago, and I am very happy. 20 GB might be nice, but I found that 5 GB is more than enough for daily music listening, (I still have 3 GB left on the player). It also plays FM radio, which is definately a nice feature if you get tired of your 1,000 (or whatever) songs. It also can record the radio stations, so if you really want you could cut the files up on your computer.

    There are also some features I don't use, like the removable disc (allocate however much of the 5GB to make a standard USB hard drive), contact list/scheduler that sincs with Outlook (so you can remember appointments with your zen!).

    The reason I went with 5 GB is not so much price ($190) but size. It even fits nicely in an altoids case, which looks pretty sweet.

    My friend's Ipod just had some corrupted files and had to be reset. Most Ipod owners are happy with their purchase, but they are indoctrined into the apple mentality. You don't need to pay an extra $50 just for the name, have a scratched up case (don't even try to keep it nice looking), or use iTunes. Of course, it's your choice (the scroll wheel is pretty cool), but I am quite satisfied with creative.

    And yes, sound quality is mainly based on your headphones. I have no complaints with creative's stock earbuds. :rock:

  10. I really wanted to go this summer, but I doubt I can now since I have a full-blown internship at Parker-Hannifin. Bof.

    Come to Norway ... snow, skiing, lots of hot girls ... everything you ever wanted =)
    That reminded me of a Monty Python sketch where Eric Idle is doing a political broadcast for the "Norwegian British Party", starts talking about the advantages of the Norwegian economy, and then says how "Norwegian girls will do anything for you, really, you just have to ask, and they know how to do it..." ;)
  11. Kent State University (where the shootings happened) isn't exactly renowned for educational quality. It took three workers at the Quizno's there to figure out how to make me a honey-mustard sub! :)

    As for the cost of a US education, here is the university I'll probably be at, U of Florida:

    Undergraduate Tuition Per Credit Hour

    Florida Residents - $98.50

    Non-Florida - $527.58

    Thank god for tuition exchange! I wouldn't shaft myself and miss too many classes if I had to pay that kind of tuition.

  12. At Hudson high school, right down the road from here, there was a student walk-out (~500 HS students) to protest the sacking of their beloved principal by the school boards. Some snowballs were thrown at cops, and pepper spray was used on the crowd :)

    School Boards seem pretty bad to me. They wouldn't give two really good cross country coaches jobs, which forced them to leave Aurora which shafts our team (3 coaches in 5 years). But, somewhere they found $5,000 a month + healthcare to retain a some treasurer who quit as a "financial advisor". :D

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