Grumble. My (shitty) cable company (my only option unless I go to DirecTV) is jacking my rates, and when I called, was like "Well, if you give up phone service, it'll only go up $20/month!" which...no. *Supposedly* there's a company bringing fiber-optic to my neighborhood in Q1 of 2014...but they haven't updated their website or twitter since October, which makes me feel like that's not happening anytime soon. GRRR.

How is your internet speed? Have you thought of "cutting the cable". Using an AppleTV, or Roku, or media server connected to your TV. Then using Hulu+, Netlfix, Amazon Prime, & iTunes for your video entertainment?

News & sports has kept me from doing it. But, there are more and more sources for that. When my contract is up in a year or so, I may finally cut the cable.

omnis, the price for just-internet from the cable company is nearly as outrageous. If/when the fiber optic comes, then I will totally contemplate it--I figure between an antenna and Hulu/Netflix/Amazon, I'm set. While I like to watch HGTV on bingey couch weekends, all the shows I really watch are network ones.

$99 tablet. Monday only. Limited quantities. [link]

Aldi has a $99 one, too.

[link]

Any thoughts?

Movie (German)

[link]

Math Question:

I have two sets of data. One is for carbon emissions from various sources. The other is for net sequestration of carbon in forests and so on by biological systems.

The data points for the biological systems are, at best of equal precision and accuracy compared to the emissions data. Good arguments why they are worse, but they might be the same. Nobody thinks they are better.

OK but there is another difference. The emissions data for a year is meaningful in itself. If so much was emitted, that is what was added to the atmosphere for the year.

But forests, and the plant canopy of ecosystems are dynamic. Carbon content varies from year to year, from season to season, often even from day to day. So a snapshot, or even a series of snapshots over a year does not tell you very much. If you want to know now sequestration is affecting carbon concentration in the atmosphere you need a trend, constructed from data over multiple years - three or four years at minimum, probably much longer. If you wanted a meaningful net emissions number, emissions - sequestration, you would have to look at the trend over the past three or more years and allocate the current year's share of that result. My first intuition is that this is not a great thing to do if there a practical alternative way of figuring out whatever you expect to learn from this net number.

My second mathematical intuition is based on the fact that sequestration data is noisy. There are lots of factors that influence sequestration - temperature, water, pests (from the forests view humans are pests), fires, storms and other disasters. So my intuition is that given the noisiness of the data, even if the data points are as precise as those for emissions, picking the equation for the trend lines is going to less precise than the emissions data - either higher error bars or worse confidence levels.

So now my question: it this kind of qualitative information sufficient to draw the conclusion I'm drawing? Or do I need to do rigorous mathematical analysis of the data sets before saying that the sequestration trend is less precise than the emission data?

My backup drive just died. Pretty much to the day when the warranty expired. I'm groaning but I'd better get another. From what I've seen prices for .5-1 TB external drives cluster around $75, with about 20% significantly cheaper, 20% significantly pricer, and about 60% in that range. I don't want another drive that will last only a year. My computer only has USB2 not USB3. So: what do I get that will last. I don't want to pay more than needed, but would rather get one that is sturdy, reliable and will last than save $20. Anything in the $75 range that you would rec? Anything significantly cheaper. Reliability, sturdiness and will hold up are my first priority, Price is my second. speed would be my third except there is a limit to how fast UBSB2 can go.

This 1 TB drive is well-reviewed on both Amazon and Newegg and is only $70 at Amazon.

OK ordered. WD does last, and it is not as tiny as the last one, so hopefully that means sturdier. Thanks muchly