southsideirish71

QUOTE(southsideirish @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 02:43 PM) He throws in the upper 90s and has never averaged close to a strikeout an inning? I find that hard to believe. Not a K an innning in college or lower A ball? Come on! He doesn't throw in the upper 90s. His frame should be pretty much filled out being 22 and playing football at a NFL type setting like Notre Dame. Give me a break. Mid 90's fastball and an above average slider. That is the best I could find on him. http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prosp...ews/263149.html Though Samardzija remains raw on the mound, the Cubs believe he'll have a consistent mid-90s fastball and an above-average slider if he commits to baseball full-time. He made seven starts this summer between short-season Boise and low Class A Peoria, going 1-2, 2.70 with 17 strikeouts in 30 innings. His frame is big enough to support his velocity. He is not a stick geeking up to throw hard is what I was talking about. "He's got the things you look for in a pitcher," said one American League scout of the 6-foot-5 Samardzija. "He just hasn't had a lot of the innings other pitchers have had because he's been playing football. He obviously doesn't spend a lot of time in the summer playing baseball. As a team, you just have to be prepared to sit down with him now and see what he wants to do and be prepared in case he doesn't like baseball. "He has what you're looking for in terms of arm and body type, and he's got a good frame. But if he's determined to play football, he's determined. This is why a lot of teams didnt draft him. The cubs gambled on him in the 2nd round threw money at him and got him to commit to basebal. If other teams knew that he would give up football, there would of been a lot more interest.

QUOTE(southsideirish @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 02:32 PM) 17 Ks in 30 innings in single A ball does not sound like a 8 million gauranteed prospect to me. It sounds like the Cubs overpaid for an average prospect. Doesn't it? The guy throws in the upper 90s and has a big enough frame to project that this will continue. That is why he was worth that money to them. That and the media factor, signing a Notre Dame prospect is always an easy way to get into the papers.

Happy Birthday! Have a great one.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Jan 16, 2007 -> 06:22 PM) So, a television station in the UK did a undercover report in mainstream moque's in that country. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?en...Mosque&only i'm not suprised by what they found. I watched this all the way through. Its very disturbing. Its funny, how these organizations are the spokepersons for the UK for religious tolerance, and openness yet behind the doors when the public is out they are preaching death to non-islam and the creation of an islamic britain under sharia law. And its not just one or 2 mosques. Its a bunch of the "moderate" mosques. Our media here is too politically correct to have a undercover item like this. I would think if they did this in the US, we would find the same thing. The basic jist of every speaker, is that all muslims are good people, and if you are not muslim you have 2 choices become a muslim or perish to Jihad. My favorite was the one crazy who wanted to crucify the christians if they didnt convert, and let them bleed for 3 days. Nice reference there crazy terrorist wantabee. Nice.

You can take two approaches here. One, my recommendation, after sentencing, dig a hole behind the courthouse, throw animal sex pervert into the hole, cover with dirt. Plant flowers and forget he was here. Or if you dont want to go with my route... Castrate him, tatoo "I am a sick sex predator" on his front and on his back put a tatoo that has a line going to his ass that says "Open for business, I never say no" then send him to general population.

QUOTE(Hideaway Lights @ Jan 17, 2007 -> 02:48 PM) By sophomore slump I mean Takatsu sophomore slump. There is a slight difference in the stuff that Takatsu was featuring over Jenks. There are 2 things that can derail Jenks, one is waistline, and the 2nd is his control. If he throws his stuff over the plate and gets ahead early he can dominate. Takatsu was a look I throw side arm and slow, slower and slowest. And then the league said, well I will make this guy throw strikes and then sit on the meatball. Then Takatsu was back to Japan.

QUOTE(Controlled Chaos @ Jan 17, 2007 -> 09:38 AM) I'll tell ya what Kap...it may be fluffy bulls***, but you'd be surprised how many people will vote for him just because he speaks well. There is a contingent of people who will vote for Hillary because they think that Bill will be president in the background. They obviously didnt pay a lot of attention to the dynamics of that relationship. Bill will be lucky if he gets an invite to the swearing in, if she won.

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 16, 2007 -> 01:49 PM) Speaking of 'hidden gems,' I'm wondering if Elmhurst qualifies. I grew up in central illinois and just recently moved up here to go to law school. My gf and I were looking for places to buy because rent on the north side is ridiculous. We looked at a lot of surrounding suburbs and Elmhurst, to me, seems like the greatest deal. It's a shortish commute (but still a commute) because its right where 290/294 meets and is a 15 min drive without traffic to 45 with traffic. The homes are both enormous and beautiful. It's an old area though, so it has some charm. The biggest thing was that we found smaller homes from 300-350k and up. They need a little work, but the homes around them are practically mansions. Little fixing up and I think the value would skyrocket. Anyone know anything about that area? Elmhurst is a nice area. But you may have a cap on the investment in a small home there. Most of those types of homes are being bought by builders who really just want to flatten the house and plant a bigger version of it. So the land will increase, however there will be a cap due to the fact that its only for a builder to flatten it. The same is seen in Clarendon Hills and Hinsdale. At lot of the smaller homes are going for almost 500k just for a knockdown in Clarendon Hills. So if you are trying to flip it to a builder I wouldnt worry about fixing it up. It doesnt matter in the long run.

QUOTE(redandwhite @ Jan 16, 2007 -> 12:53 PM) Crede' salary is doubling here, correct?. It's not cheap by any means then. If Joe Crede were a Red Sox Rednwhite "How can you say that the Red Sox aren't the best, they just signed one of the best 3rd basemen in the league. Look at his numbers and how they matched up to Arod and Chavez. My god isnt Theo a genius." Joe Crede the White Sox player. Rednwhite "You are getting hosed, paying a player double from his salary last year. Mike Lowell is healthy at least."

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 16, 2007 -> 12:42 PM) Two other positives for an older home... 1. If bought cheaper, with some elbow grease and some investing, you can turn it into a value proposition and make serious bucks. There is risk in that too, of course. 2. Many homes built now are just not built well. Quality is poor. These homes will, in a decade or two, start to look pretty bad. That can effect the value when you want to sell it later, or even in the short run, for picky buyers. On the other hand, a house built in 1900, if its still in reasonably good shape, it probably will be for another few decades. I bought my house a 1974 year old 4 bedroom colonial in a Gallagher and Henry subdivision a few years back. One of my brothers is a carpenter(odd that I would have tradesmen in the family being irish). I bought a house that needed some work and basically re did it. It took 3 years to redo it, and doing all of the work outside of the plumming with family saved me a ton of money. The house has some creaks and that, but its definately worth it. I have a big house in a wonderful neighborhood and I didnt have to spend the money that others did for the same product.

I am a cheap ass also when it comes to clothes. Steve and Barry's used to have everything for 7.95. However they wised up and started to charge a bit more. But 14 bucks for a pair of jeans that is just as good as name bran works for me. http://www.steveandbarrys.com/

QUOTE(Jimbo @ Jan 16, 2007 -> 11:43 AM) Crede does not want to drop the devil as an agent, too bad. If you had a guy tell you that he can guarentee you that you will make 4 times your current salary for a 5 to 7 year term I am sure that you would say sorry my loyalities lie with my current employer.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 16, 2007 -> 11:32 AM) To be honest, this has to go on more than we ever can imagine. Corporate spying is done by most governments outside of the US because many countries either heavily subsidize, or even own key industries and companies. I was at an FBI Infraguard meeting where they had a counter-terrorism specialist talk to the threat of corporate espionage from foreign governments. It was a very interesting, and scary presentation on what is really going on.

I am probably the most paranoid person when it comes to trusting items in an OS. However this one has too much public scrutiny and will have too many security researchers and handlers looking for security issues and communication leaks coming from it. I deal with looking at traffic traces on a daily basis. If Vista starts to reach out, and make communications encrypted or not, someone in my field (hopefully me for the publishing rights) will see it and will publish it. The NSA provides a great service to the security community. Their guides and templates can provide a blueprint on how to lock down some problematic Operating systems to lock down. Whenever a company, hopefully with a good security group , hands over intellectual property such as code or the Operating system itself they would of performed some sort of cryptographic hashing like MD5 or SHA-1 of every single file to help fight against any rogue code being placed in there. These ciphers create a signature in HEX that can provide a template for the integrity of that file. Now hopefully they didnt use SHA-1 as it was designed by the NSA. The real risk to you as a user or as a company is not the placement of trojans or rootkits at inception. Its the placement of these pieces of malware during your normal browsing, email and downloading. Spyware, and viruses and worms provide more of an intellectual property and personal liberty risk than the NSA review. There are pieces of malware out there that place sniffers and taps on your system that filter on credit cards, or passwords and send them back to a foreign host. There are worms that target specific files such as Cad, design, and word, excel and powerpoint presentations. They filter on these and zip them up and send them off. As far as Vista from a security standpoint. I have mixed reviews. Some items they have changed, like their new memory randomization feature to keep malware from running. I will have to see how this works in the wild before I declare that they have fixed malware. However with the Operating system designed to be so developer friendly they will still have all sorts of issues. They are making strides from a security standpoint. But still have quite a way to go.

QUOTE(WHarris1 @ Jan 14, 2007 -> 08:38 PM) What member of the Bears org pissed in Wojo's Cheerios? http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/sto...&id=2731418 What a douche You can't expect Gene to be a good writer, with all of his original thoughts coming up in his soon to be released book in 08. 100 Years of Crap What its like to be drunk and a cubs fan.

QUOTE(SoxFan101 @ Jan 14, 2007 -> 04:08 AM) Maybe he is a bit over-rated.... but nobody is moreso than Beckham. He is a great passer and a great freekicker if thats even a word, but the rest of his game at this stage of his career especially is lacking. Donovan is in my mind no doubt a better player but of course Beckham has soooo much more star power. Even at over 30 Beckham is better than Donovan. Beckham has played in some of the toughest environments on the biggest stages and has had some really good moments, and some not so good. Donovan likes to play like a star against minnows like Costa Rica and Canada and such, but put a good team on him, or say send him to Germany in the Bundesliga and you watch him wimper and fall aside. Donovan has talent, but he doesnt have the stones. If Donovan had stones, he would be telling people he wanted to play in Europe, with the best. But he likes to nutmeg some 37 year old Ukranian wearing an MLS jersey instead of playing against the best.

QUOTE(robinventura23 @ Jan 13, 2007 -> 09:45 AM) Jack also has the best cell phone service. He can go through tunnels, on airplanes, underground, etc. and still have great communication with Chloe. The technology is cool from the show, however not even close to reality. You have to take it with a grain of salt when you see some of it. I love the realtime data uploads and how quick it is. Its faster than the speed of light. Last nights little thing where the presidents sister decided to "shred" the server. 30 seconds and the data is gone, yeah right. You cant even delete data at that rate even with the fastest drives on earth, more or less send random data to fill every sector on a hard drive(which is what shredding is). I love how they crack military level encryption that the NSA cant either in a matter of minutes. Chloe just clicks a few keystrokes and poof the cipher is gone. I love the show, and wish some of the technology that was in it was reality. My only question is how many times will Cisco get plugged in this season. They obviously pay a lot of bank to get that privilege. I almost fell off my chair last year when Chloe actually used the phrase "dont worry the Cisco Self Defending network will take care of it". Nice product placement.

How hard is this for people to understand. Mike Murphy is a cub fan. Think about that for a second, when have you had an objective conversation with a cub fan on the state of the sox. Some people need constant reassurance from the media that everything is ok, that every move is correct. Well that isnt going to happen. The media are people, just like you and I. And that means that everyone is flawed, like you and I. Take everything these douches say with a grain of salt, and remember that its just an opinion from another flawed human being.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Jan 12, 2007 -> 12:52 AM) If we left tomorrow, would it be a defeat? What events have to occur for it to be a "win"? How are you measuring defeat and victory? The perception after Somalia was simple. If you kill Americans and draw blood, the american public will not have the stomach for it, and will want to get out. Its what our adversaries count on. This is why withdrawing right now is a bad idea. IMO this war was fought wrong. Bush wanted it both ways, he wanted to topple the dictator, and then make nice with the natives. So instead of just going in and winning this thing. We fought it enough to get the "technical" win, but left too much of the infrastructure of war up that could be used against us. When you fight a war it should be to win. You dont embed reporters in your army if you are trying to win a war. Now its just a mess, and we have 2 problems.

QUOTE(SoxFan1 @ Jan 12, 2007 -> 12:38 AM) The best player doesn't always dominate...especially with Beckham being a midfielder. There is no doubt he'll score a few goals, but he won't be the superstar everyone thinks he will. He's already showing signs of slowing (much of the English media called him out for it too) and 50 millions dollars isn't really motivation to work harder. On the outside, he will have an impact due to name recognition. On the pitch he can have an impact, but it depends on his fitness level and his work ethic. The MLS game is not a technical game right now. Its an athletic game. Lots of running balls out. Its the one comment that is said when the premiership players have had to deal with the MLS, its that the fitness of the US players is first class. However the technical side is where we lack. He will have an impact on the MLS due to how that club is setup and how the league plays. Most of the midfielders play lob and run with their forwards. Beckham unless he changes, will deliver a crisp pass on the run to Donovan who hopefully will be able to strike with that kind of pass. We develop speed on the outside, we develop defense and goalkeepers. However we dont develop midfielders well in the US. The US game needs to catch up with the world game and start to feed passes on the ground in a quick crisp strike, to catch the runner in motion. Right now I see midfielders lobbing the ball, which is hard to catch on the run and create with. Mainly strikes happen due to defensive blunders more than from creativity. Its the biggest deficiency in the US program. The way for US soccer to establish a hotbed of talent is to get inner city youth involved in soccer. Its always been the game of the common man, because all you need is a ball and that is it. Hence why its huge in every country. You get a kid who might not be talented enough to play first string baseball, basketball or football...but he still might be more athletic or talented than the bevy of midgets we have been featuring on the US team. The minute we get a better pool of athletes, and identify them, and get them in the right programs the better US soccer will be in the long run. And if Becks gets people involved who wouldnt be, then its worth it.

The Olsen Twins I never get how these two little alien muppett looking creatures get all the love that they do. They have kermit the frogs body, mixed with Stewie Griffin's oval head. That plus their overly large eyes make them look almost alien. If they want to look totally alien, they wear goofy oversized clown glasses, and some sort of prego tent on their stick body.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Jan 11, 2007 -> 10:21 AM) What a coup for American Soccer. I am back and forth on this move. Lets all get this straight. He was picked up for his name, not his footballing. His status has been dropping for a while. He was dropped from the English squad by McClaren and mid level Premiership clubs were after him. This move works out great for Becks, Posh gets to Hollywood. And his fame will go around here like crazy. Now from the good side, you will see for the first time people buying MLS La Galaxy shirts outside of the US based on his name. However on the bad side, if the league really wanted to become more competitive it would of sunk this money into some premier players and taken the quality of play up a notch. Watching the MLS flow of a game is almost like watching them run in quicksand. When Chelsea plaid the MLS allstarts they wet down the field, and didnt cut the grass in Bridgview so the weren't run off the field by Chelsea. For this type of money the league could of picked up a few top of the line guys who could of made this league a bit more competitive. Now on the other side of the pond, Fulham keeps signing US players in the Premiership. They just signed Clint Dempsey, have McBridge, and Bocanegra. And are trying to sign gooch for defense. Coleman is a good manager and gets the most out of a medicore budget over in the Premiership. So inmho, the Beckham thing gives the MLS its glory boy that Donovan isnt, but from a US soccer standpoint, our moves to the real competitive leagues around the world makes our country stronger for the WC.

QUOTE(BobDylan @ Jan 11, 2007 -> 03:11 AM) You must be skilled with a knife, as the cases aren't meant to be popped open. The phone doesnt need this as it is flash based. However one of my geek reverse engineering sites will disassemble this and will have detailed intructions on how to dissemble the new iPhone after they become available. However on the older IPOD this is not that difficult. You dont need to be skilled with a knife. All it takes is a precision screwdriver and to fit in an turn just a bit, then move around the case. It will pop open in a matter of seconds. The case was in 2 pieces before. So it can be opened. It has a backplate, and a front plate. The front plate has the controller board on it where the drive is mounted with a standard IDE connector, and the back plate has a ribbon cable that connects the IPOD interface to the controller board. You just have to be careful when you swing it open as the ribbon cable is delicate.

QUOTE(BobDylan @ Jan 10, 2007 -> 07:40 PM) So you know my friends, eh? If I were to buy a "smart"phone, I'd buy a Sidekick 3. They use flash cards. And I'm sorry that your phone couldn't transfer your data. Do some research next time. Thanks for all the sarcasm, by the way. You sound like a Mac user. I am a Mac user, and I am also a CCIE. I know the view is that most Mac users are arts/publishing people. Some of us configure routers, switches, and firewalls with them. Some of us actually perform security audits from them. I am a Unix user that happens to like BSD based operating systems. First of all transferring phone information including contacts, numbers and other information has not been an issue even with older phones. Either your vendor will transfer the information, my wife uses sprint and her phone doesn't have a SIM card, and they transfered it for her. Or you can pickup 3rd party software to backup the phone and transfer that information for you. A SIM card is not the only way, in fact we have seen just as many issues with SIM cards where the get damaged, corrupted, and fail. Comparing the Hiptop OS that comes on the Sidekick to even a scaled down version of a BSD like OS like OSX or Windows Mobile is not even close. Items running Linux/Windows Mobile/or OSX are smartphones. Items running simple operating system that port a few java apps ontop of them are not. The SD/CF cards that run on these models of phones might have the capacity from a storage standpoint however they lack the throughput to run an OS/interactive video or support context switching within a full fledged interactive OS. You might see a 4.8 mb/s write speed, however without cache or the proper interface these cards will not be able to support a real OS whether that is Windows Mobile or a scaled down version of OSX. Apple used a mobile hard drive in the original ipods due to size limitations at the time, but also due to throughput. I have tested and have used several smart phones including the Windows Mobile. I have decided that I dont need the bells and whistles of the smartphone group. My biggest gripe is battery life. Especially with WiFi connections, I will be interested on how Apple solves this issue. My current blackberry works great for my purposes. The small keyboard is easy to use and most blackberry users get very proficient in typing with it. I figure that the same will hold for the iPhone. The blackberry is not what I would call a smart phone. It has a base OS that runs some Java Apps ontop of it. It gives me my corporate email which works just fine for my needs. Outside of the video/media the iphone has some real promise. The OSX os can run a ton of open source/optimized apps that run on slower hardware. You can really get your bang for the buck. Where a smartphone like the iPhone or the windows mobile phone will make a splash is when some companies write apps for them. When a sales associate can pull up numbers on their phone with a few clicks instead of having boot your laptop up. I am not talking about a silly spreadsheet also. Some interactive app with some data drilldown capabilities. The Apple IPOD disk failure issue. I get a kick out of this one. As far as the hard drive issues. If you know how to replace an HD in a computer, you can replace the hard drive in an Ipod. I had one hard drive error in my gen 4 Ipod. It took about 2 minutes to pop out the 1.8 inch hard drive, and about 10 minutes to find a 60 dollar replacement on ebay. After reinstalling the software my ipod was good as new.