Jake

QUOTE (Middle Buffalo @ Feb 11, 2014 -> 11:30 PM) You answered my question. Thanks. Also, TV doesn't need to be powered on if you're using a box. Only the box would need to be on in that case. You can even send the power command in this case.

If you have a newish wireless card, you can use Connectify to broadcast your VPN signal. A lot less fuss than dealing with a router as well as something that requires less expertise.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Feb 11, 2014 -> 02:17 PM) I've thought about a VPN router too, but am admittedly a little ignorant on the subject. Just curious, does anybody know the legality of it? Having a VPN is not illegal, but I'm almost certain you'd be violating the TOS w/MLB.tv, etc. by using one.

You can get a VPN-enabled router which will place you outside your current market. I'm not the expert on set-up and all that, though. I live outside Chicago market as it is.

I still remember Thibs saying he "loves" Melo, which is nice. A team with Rose-Melo-Noah is f***ing great. That's a big three. If that team had Taj, Mirotic, Shumpert, Felton? Not bad. If we could work out a deal that involves fewer players/picks going the other direction, imagine how nice it would be to have Jimmy/Snell/first round picks hanging around.

Since the trade is made for the purpose of next year rather than this year, Boozer makes sense as a pseudo-expiring contract. We could do a nearly-the-same deal in the offseason, in which case he is expiring. If NYK wants to trade for some other star to replace the presence of Melo, they'd need Boozer to do it.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Feb 11, 2014 -> 12:40 PM) Would all that work cap wise? I guess if the Bulls don't think they can get him in FA then I'd do it. Assuming Melo signs a Bird Exception deal that is gently backloaded, we'd have $73M committed to Melo, Rose, Noah, Taj, Felton, Dunleavy, and Shumpert (players listed from largest to smallest salary). It would be cutting it really close in terms of the tax and our ability to give MLE to Mirotic.

I'd do it. You're left with Rose, Melo, Noah, Taj, Mirotic coming back for next year along with Felton and Shumpert. You're giving up some serious value there but you're getting Melo without gutting your top talents. Now, NYK only does this if they think/know that Melo is going elsewhere.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 12:38 PM) Of course he was rattled. They brought in a guy who most likely doesnt believe in the concept of being gay to discuss a football player coming out as gay. He's been a bit smoother today. There has been some good stuff from the NFL guys on ESPN today. They're awkward about it, a bit apprehensive...but they're being honest. When Antonio Pierce says he would be a little shy at first, he's not being a hatemonger. He's just trying to get used to things and I think a lot of people will be like that. They haven't had openly gay friends or even acquaintances and the idea of being in close quarters with a gay person will challenge them. They will have to learn why it is that it's ridiculous to think that being nude around a gay man is the worst thing in the world -- it makes a tiny bit of intuitive sense, but they'll have to hear people like Michael Sam say that "hey, I'm not a predator. I'm not in the locker room preying on you." People's insecurity will have to get checked before they can move on and I'm okay with that as long as they can continue doing things in good faith and recognize that this is a problem that is theirs, not his. I think the vast majority of people have been okay with the abstract idea of a gay football player but will now have to take it that extra step...this is different than the idea that I'm sure a minority have, which is having to accept Michael Sam before they've even come to terms with the idea of a gay football player.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 07:20 AM) So, Herm Edwards had a great segment on ESPN about Sam I honestly think Herm was making a good-faith effort to discuss this, but he was clearly rattled by something--probably the fear of saying something inappropriate, whether intentional or not. I think he was trying to say that the only comparison we can make to this situation is to draftees who have character questions since they also cause teams worry for their effects on the locker room.

Players like Sam were always going to polarize in terms of draft projections since he really is a 3-4 LB. We drafted Cornelius Washington in the 6th last year and several mocks had him in the 2nd, most in the 3rd-4th.

I think he did the right thing. He didn't want to be outed. He didn't want rumors to affect his draft stock or standing in the locker room. He didn't want to be what is essentially a ticking time bomb in the locker room, where he'd risk calamity after letting it out in the middle of his career. Now he gets to say "Hey NFL, I'm Michael Sam and I'm gay. Take it or leave it."

It's a deal where Marcus is still wrong for hitting a fan, but if the context is what we believe it to be, we just know that he's not a bad kid. He's a kid that lost his temper when someone quite legitimately challenged that temper. We'll hope he learned from it.

The guy who instigated (maybe) the incident texted a reporter and said he said something that he shouldn't have and feels bad about it. Of course...many wonder if it is the so-called "magic hate word" going on here.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Feb 8, 2014 -> 06:22 PM) MySpace became a total clusterf*** with all the HTML editing you can do on their pages. It always seemed to me that was the thing its users liked the most about it. I think the problem was that by its nature, HTML editing or not, it became something that adults would never like...and unfortunately its user base starting approaching adulthood. We're already seeing with Facebook that you can't own a single age demographic across generations when it comes to social networking, it seems.

Facebook, like Gmail, had exclusivity on its side. Only *certain* people could join at first.

Nowhere did he say anything like "I never wanted to rebuild." All he said was that the reason we didn't rebuild is because we had competitive teams. We've already seen elsewhere where it has been strongly suggested that Reinsdorf has been the one commanding against rebuilds against KW's suggestions otherwise.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Feb 7, 2014 -> 10:51 PM) Google+ is pretty much a Google/tech news reader. Oh and I also use it to get beta versions of apps. That's about it. I actually do talk to friends on Hangouts though, it's one of the few major video services that allows you to do multi-person chats for free. I'm also a big fan of Hangouts and following Google/Android news and getting beta apps is pretty much what I do with G+. With that said, I probably still use it more than Facebook, which has become a tremendous waste of time despite my doing a mass purge of friends/follows to see if I might start seeing things that are worthwhile on there

Yeah, I would love Google+....if only anyone used it.

I think he dropped the charges so that the arbitrator's findings didn't go public.

I've also heard that these things dogs are no longer fit for living among humans, that they've generally been wild for so many generations that they can only fathomably exist in the form they do now -- in cities, with relatively non-hostile humans, eating human waste. They would harm other ecosystems and they'd be too volatile to live with people.

If I'm the rooftop owners, I'm pricing myself unbelievably high. I would be calling their bluff on moving perpetually. I would make them go very far down the process of moving before I'd budge unless they met an obscenely high demand, something like my next 30-50 years of projected profits

I think Luol is really good. He should be the kind of guy that gets a ring, but doesn't get anywhere near the love he deserves on the team he wins it with. While it is worth recognizing that his per-36's won't be as impressive as his per-game stats, the fact that he can play so much is itself a big value.

What juicer are you using?

Nothing is really more unprecedented about our current polarization than this. Our Congress acts extremely polarized, pretty much as polarized as any other time before, but not more than any other time. But the way we feel about the opposing parties? Yuck, and the feeling is mutual. Then there's this, which is interesting. Republicans will have elevated trust in the government when there is a Republican president while it drops noticeably when there is a D in there. Democrats, according to the researchers, who produced this graph, simply don't really identify the government with the President the way Republicans do. They are optimistic that the government can do right when there is an R president in a way that the inverse is not true.