08:28 – Thanks to the kindness of a reader, I now have a legal copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. I attempted to install it on the new Atom system in the den yesterday afternoon, and the system behaved exactly as it had when I attempted to install several flavors of Linux. What’s worse is that it’s behaving exactly as the old Atom system was behaving. With the old system, I thought at first that the problem was the video drivers in the new releases of Linux. I then concluded that it was a hardware problem. I then replaced the system, which behaved the same way. I then attempted to install Windows 7, which behaved the same way. I now conclude that the problem is either the display, although I’ve never seen a display behave like this, or perhaps the cable, although I’ve used both analog and digital cables. The next step is to connect the old system to the TV and see if it works. If so, I’ll replace the display and cables and end up with two functional Atom systems, one for Barbara’s office and one for the den.
As we approach the end of September, kit sales are definitely getting more sporadic. Some days, we ship three or four kits, other days one or two, and some days none at all. The next couple of months are likely to be slow, averaging one or two kits a day. Things will pick up again in early December, as people start ordering kits for Christmas and the beginning of the second semester. Then around mid-January they’ll drop off again and remain slow through about April, when they’ll start to pick up again. We’ll ship a lot of kits in June and then be covered up with orders again in July and August and into September.
I want to have two more kits available for 2013, which means I need to take advantage of these slower periods to get the kits and associated manuals complete. My goal is to complete the Life Science (grade 7) kit and documentation in October and November and be ready to start shipping kits in early December. That gives me mid-January through April to do the Physical Science (grade 8) kit and documentation and have them ready for summer shipments.
Ideally, I’d like to have a third middle-school kit–Earth and Space Science–also available next year, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I simply won’t have time to write the documentation and design and produce the kits and still get everything else done.
11:54 – Wow. If the riots in Spain were bad, the ones now going on in Greece are catastrophic. Various reports put the figures at 50,000 to 100,000 Athenians rioting in support of the general strike. I’m actually surprised that the Greek government has been able to field as many riot police as they have. The sympathies of most of those police officers must be with the rioters. And those police are facing desperate people armed with Molotov cocktails. It may not happen this time, but with Greece facing almost daily protests and riots, sooner or later the cops are going to respond with lethal force. Greece is already effectively ungovernable. Once the government starts shooting protesters, there’s no way back. And the Greek people have not yet begun to experience the level of suffering that they’re inevitably going to face. They’re throwing firebombs now. What are they going to do when the money completely runs out? We’re looking at the beginning of what is likely to become a bloody civil war.
I read that last paragraph as “I’d like to have a third Middle Earth Space Science School Kit.
Which when you think of it, would be pretty cool. I’d like to have one, too!
What? Build your own Orcs in orbit?
Yeah, you’re right, that would be cool.
Bob, if you can manage it, I’m a customer.
Sorry, we can’t ship Middle Earth Space Science School Kits to Australia.
What we are seeing in Greece is the socialist end game. It’s a classic case of Maggie Thatcher’s aphorism (and I paraphrase) that socialism is great until you run out of other peoples’ money.
How long until those riots happen here in the USA? I was discussing the financial cliff approaching in the USA with the wife last night and she said thank goodness that we did not have the severe recession in 2008-9 like in the 1930s. I replied that all of the government social programs were preventing us from going that far down and then noted that we needed to pull our military out of Germany, South Korea, the middle east and anywhere else that we have troops. Her reply was that was not going to solve the financial problems and that the military would just lay those soldiers off as they came home so we ought to just leave them there. I was speechless. She then noted that China would probably take over Taiwan, South Korea and Japan within a year if we left. I said that it was none of our business to which she disagreed.
I then concluded that it was a hardware problem.
I am guessing that both systems have different power supplies. That has proven to be the cause of mysterious system behavior from my experience. Something flat out not working is generally a cable or the device. But video going bad, that is indeed odd but it may be a power management issue with the power supply.
Also find what is common between both systems, what you were using on the first system that you are now using on the second system.
Also have you done a magic incantation and sacrificed a thumb drive recently? If not you need to do so occassionally to satisfy the computer gods.
Of course a Greek civil war wouldn’t solve any of the Greek people’s problems.
Even assuming the ideal case of a quick, clean, and nondestructive regime change, what options does the NEW Greek government have? It has the same problems as the current government, and the same three broad choices: leave the Euro and deflate, stay in the Euro and default, or stay in the Euro and be austere and beg. The new government just has less credibility with the rest of the EU, so they’ll have less chance of negotiating/delaying/begging. Greece is hosed. It did it to itself by its decision to borrow borrow borrow and spend spend spend.
Come now. Ask any politician. This is just Bad Luck.
I see two alternatives:
– Greece has a military coup and is kicked out of the EU and Euro
– Greece has a communist coup and is kicked out of the EU and Euro
They need to deflate, and badly.
Robert Bruce Thompson says:
26 September 2012 at 12:09
“Sorry, we can’t ship Middle Earth Space Science School Kits to Australia.”
Darn!
I was picturing something like the Motie watchmakers, turned loose on the feral rabbits, foxes, and cane toads. And goats. And pigs. And hares. And wild dogs and feral cats. And horses. And donkeys. And camels. And wild cattle. And water buffalo. Sheep are okay – the moment a New Zealand tourist bus turns up, the sheep almost all head for the hills. If they don’t, we shoot their owner – almost always a NZ immigrant.
Of course, we got the cane toads because someone thought they’d control cane beetles. However, watchmakers are bigger than cane toads and rabbits. Maybe they’d loosen up on firearms control, so everyone could shoot a watchmaker on sight. One can dream.
Funny that Ford’s European revenues floated it through the US downturn from 2007 through 2009, but now European losses may top $1 billion this year. Lots of European job cuts planned.
I noted some time ago that Dean Baker has posited that with the loss of trillions in personal and corporate wealth caused by the housing and banking crises in the US, we were set back to 1992 in terms of capital assets. Perhaps not so oddly, I have read and heard several items being compared to 1997—oil demand, electric energy production, and employment figures in certain sectors among them. Looks like we are following real-time in rebuilding capital wealth, and not bouncing back more quickly. May be another 10 years to get back to 2007 pre-crash levels.
Regarding China, a recent interview on BBC World Service news had a guy, one parent Chinese and the other American, who is now at a think tank specializing in China. He says China will not ever go after anything that was not once under their control, but they will seriously challenge every place that once belonged to them. Not sure what all that includes beyond the former Formosa, Tibet, and that island the Chinese and Japanese are currently fighting over, but China will not expand beyond its former boundaries, says that fellow. This is built into the Chinese psyche, he claims. Conquest of foreign lands is completely against their make-up, but recovering others’ conquests of them is quintessentially Chinese.
The Greek riots: On one hand, one understands that people are frustrated. On the other hand, what the heck do they expect the government to do? Their demands are simply not possible? On the gripping hand, don’t they realize that their riots are actually making the situation even worse? They are costing the government more money and simultaneously reducing the productivity of the private sector.
Anyway, what Fred said in his latest rant: “I will now enunciate Fred’s Principle…If you can’t pay for it, don’t buy it.”
Just a thought… What would happen if you did install XP on the Atom system???
–Jerry
I’m not even sure I have an XP disc around any more. Even if I did, it’s unlikely that it’d install on the Atom system unless I built a new XP disc with SPs installed.
It’s probably Greek military in policy uniforms.