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He said essential liberty for a little temporary safety, don't mix it up.

I don't recall the exact phrase but it still applies. I bet the Gestapo and KGB would of loved these technologies. Some may, no will, say but the US won't abuse them however history has shown the government or people in the government will abuse them. I doubt many slashdotters lived through J Edgar Hoover's reign of the FBI but he vary much abused his power. Even less lived through McCarthyism and Mccarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee or the Hollywood Blacklist. As late as the 1970s the US government were forcibly sterilizing American Indian women as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

No, I do not trust government, I fear government more than anything else, including those "terrorists" the government wants to protect us from.

Falcon

I think pretending we don't have these fantasies is unhealthy, and someone repressing their sexual feelings probably contributes to an inability to channel their more violent desires into harmless channels. If the thought of raping a schoolgirl turns you on - buy your wife a uniform and play together. More likely than not (55% chance) she's into the same thing.

IMHO: Fantasizing about rape is no more likely to make you a rapist, than reading SF novels will make you an astronaut.

You've used the word 'evolve' in the sense of development, advancement or maturity. These are subjective terms.

Biological evolution has a very different meaning. It's merely the process of variation / selection / heredity. It does not mean that something becomes more complex or more intelligent (although certain complexities and intelligences do tend to help with survival in the wild, and therefore those traits might stick around).

So, yes, whoever makes more babies will have more of their traits spread around. There's a good chance that about 1 in 12 men in Asia (and therefore 1 in 200 men worldwide) are descendants of Genghis Khan.

Microsoft is having huge problems with the EU because, well they are actually interested in the public good.

Microsoft is not the only one. People who want privacy, liberty, and economic stability are also having huge problems due to the "public good".

If privacy is important then Europe is better when it comes to businesses. Europe has tougher privacy laws than the US. For instance the EU's Data Privacy Directive requires businesses to protect people's privacy.

Falcon

"connecting cameras to their tongues" WTF?

The original ScienceNews article from 2001 is now subscriber only:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/1946/title/The_Seeing_Tongue

But you can read a copy of it at:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_9_160/ai_78681631/

Surprisingly, in ultra-marathons it seems that women are able to beat men - and are doing so regularly. Take a look at this for example.

Read a lot of good posts and ideas so far here. From my perspective, the most cost effective solution for you and the business is, you need a backup engineer for in case you do get hit by that bus. Having a person knowledgeable enough about your network to keep it running in the event you are incapacitated for a length of time is by far the most beneficial, if for no other reason, because of the quick turnaround time they can come in and take over vs. company looking for another engineer, and the time it takes to learn the network and scrounge threw docs you created.

Very few documents are actually that meaningful if the engineer is halfway competent so as others have mentioned, no need to go documentation crazy. There are key docs I feel though that should be created and maintained and have been mentioned above.

1) Passwords, I cannot stress this enough, get all accounts privileged accounts and service accounts documented with passwords and secured somewhere (preferably off the network, such as a USB key with the data on it in a safe) as without this, it can be a very ugly scene.

2) Next, overall, logical and physical network diagrams are paramount. If done correctly can make troubleshooting a breeze, and a nightmare if not done correctly. One link that I like is a reference to a best practice guide about the Cisco 4000, 5000, and 6000 series equipment found here ( http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps663/products_tech_note09186a0080094713.shtml#management_cfg ). Go to the network diagrams section and review the overall, physical, and logical section. Create your docs with this as a guide and any engineer who may have to troubleshoot the network will love you for it.

3) The answer to what 'other' documents should I create? Comes from you. Knowing what you know about your network, pretend you are coming into the network for the first time, and ask yourself, what I would wish I knew about this network? Make a list of your business critical functions where people would be screaming if the service was inaccessible. Document what would be useful info in a DR scenario of recovering the service. This leads me to the last doc I would recommend as useful only as an insurance policy for the business.

4) A procedural document of how to recover various business critical services. Again, key focus is on business critical, business users or clients will care less about non business critical services or be a lot more forgiving. This can assist greatly an engineer if good recovery procedures are documented, especially in area where customizations have been done (i.e. scripts and what not)

The other biggest important thing you should do is manage the businesses expectations. Talk with the business to get feedback as to What are the business critical services and document them. Next, get your Service Level Agreements ( SLAs ) agreed upon between you and them. And make sure you can meet them. If not, get a projects/tasks list together of what needs to be done so that either A) the business will fork over cash to meet agreed upon SLAs or B) they will accept the current SLAs.

The SLAs are important because it will force you to take a hard look at the network to see if you meeting their expectations. That is really what it all comes down to. When I.T. does not meet expectations is when the business gets all bent outta shape. Manage the expectations and get your SLAs agreed upon for restoration of services and you will be ok.

One more link that can help in ensuring you can meet SLAs is getting your RTO and RPO defined for you business critical services. Here is a nice easy link that talks about this that should help you.
( http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BRZ/is_3_24/ai_n6017376/ )

Good Luck!

Sure, but it costs more to grow than import from places such as Cuba...

Yes, CUBA! Drop that silly 50 year old cold-war embargo and you'll have an abundance of cheap sugar cane from Uncle Raul.

Historically, sugar has been the linchpin of the Cuban economy. For decades prior to the 1959 Revolution, sugar provided around 80 percent earnings and was so pervasive that a popular fatalistic phrase often heard in Cuba was "sin azucar no hay pais," meaning without sugar there is no country.

No you didn't; you dug your head into the sand because you don't want to believe otherwise. The last one should be of special intrest to you, because you believe speed limits are for saftey. From that link:

"Lowering speed limits more than 5 mi/h (8 km/h) below the 85th percentile speed of traffic did not reduce accidents."

and

"Based on the free-flow speed data collected for a 24-h period at the experimental and comparison sites in 22 States, posted speed limits were set, on the average, at the 45th percentile speed or below the average speed of traffic"

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4179/is_19990425/ai_n11718981/
http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/home/higher-65-mph-save-lives/
http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/home/did-raising-freeway-speed-limits-affect-traffic-safety/
http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/home/new-york-dot-study/
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html

But please, keep telling yourself speed limits are all about safety, when studies show the opposite.

Little difference between orange juice and cola, really. If you like one over the other fine, but it's close to a wash nutritionally.

Not true; for instance, orange juice contains potassium:
see here

('...One eight-ounce glass of orange juice contains 450 milligrams of potassium, the same as an average banana....')

channels

What legal channels? Certainly American Indians didn't stamp visas. Oh you mean the European settlers, the same ones who massacred those already here? At least I don't see Mexicans doing that. And there are Mexicans who have the right to cross the border. The US Mexican border cuts right through the Tohono O'odham Nation. Yuman Indians who live on the border find it hard to get both Mexican passports and US visas. Some Indian tribes in Arizona oppose restrictions.

Falcon

Since the White House said Chopra will be creating jobs and reducing health care costs, it seems a question or two about his involvement with Healthaxis should be asked. In 2005, Chopra took a seat on the Board of Healthaxis, which was brokered as part of an offshoring deal that required Healthaxis to throw offshoring work to an investor's BPO company in an effort to reduce the costs of its Utah and Jamaica resources. At the time of his 2006 resignation, Healthaxis reported to the SEC that Chopra, who also sat on the firm's Compensation Committee, had 'no disagreement with the Company on any matter'.

McDonald's Founder's wife left $200 Million to them

NPR, the last I heard from them, gets about 10% of their budget from the Government. But I agree, that should be cut too.

as if the Japanese people were a different species.

I know it's not all that nice to bring up differences in races, but those differences exist. For example, my wife (Vietnamese) discovered that Asians are more likely to be diagnosed with gestational diabetes but after more research found that part of the problem isn't that Asians get it more often, it's that doctors diagnose them with gestational diabetes more often than they ought because their bodies handle the tests differently.

Yes technically it was mercantilism or something similiar to that - but Libertarianism is effective the same thing as the platform of the Libertarian Party, if it were implemented, would let corporations run ramshod all over everyobdy else.

If this is what you believe you don't know what the Libertarian Party, or libertarians, stand for. For instance they are and were opposed to all the bailouts. Ask a libertarian, big "L" or small, if the banks should have been bailed out and almost all would say no. Here, I'll make is easy for you with a search of the LP website for bank bailout.

And on corporations, here's what the LP says about Corporate Welfare. One libertarian writer says this: "Corporations are pure-bred progeny of Leviathan."

Falcon

well, sort of. you are right that it has been 50 years. the US Army had been successful with portable nuclear power plants. from the 60's to the 70's they have used 2mW and 10mW power plants successfully (about halfway down for info )
the russians are not unfamiliar with the concept it seems.
PBS had a great documentary on how the US Army could set up and safely use portable nuclear power plants in the arctic, however no linkie could be found...

Ironically, the Economist misses an important piece of the puzzle. It writes:

TEN years ago this week a black box was demonstrated at a broadcastersâ(TM) convention in Las Vegas. TiVo's digital video recorder (DVR) was expensive: the cheapest model cost $499. But it was hailed as revolutionary.

The 1999 CES awarded the "Best of Show" video category to ReplayTV, with Tivo as the runner up.

Marc Andreessen, Netscape Communications co-founder and recently named Replay-Networks board member, calls ReplayTV "just about the coolest thing I've ever seen."

The man who made the Internet accessible to millions of people worldwide thinks ReplayTV and Replay Network Service will fundamentally change how people watch and interact with television. "Replay could do for television what Netscape did for the Internet," Andreessen said.

ReplayTV was the DVR to own during the analog era. It offered built-in autoconfiguring ethernet, automatic user-oblivious commercial skip (using detection heuristics similar to those now employed by MythTV) and the ability to exchange show recordings over the internet. The last two features were potentially massively disruptive to the TV/movie industry and landed the ReplayTV people in court. The protracted legal battles drained the company's finances and attention, and in the end they consented to remove the coolest features from their newer units. By then Tivo, which always played well the media conglomerates, had taken most of the market by offering units with significantly less disruptive potential.

Ironically, the Economist misses an important piece of the puzzle. It writes:

TEN years ago this week a black box was demonstrated at a broadcastersâ(TM) convention in Las Vegas. TiVo's digital video recorder (DVR) was expensive: the cheapest model cost $499. But it was hailed as revolutionary.

The 1999 CES awarded the "Best of Show" video category to ReplayTV, with Tivo as the runner up.

Marc Andreessen, Netscape Communications co-founder and recently named Replay-Networks board member, calls ReplayTV "just about the coolest thing I've ever seen."

The man who made the Internet accessible to millions of people worldwide thinks ReplayTV and Replay Network Service will fundamentally change how people watch and interact with television. "Replay could do for television what Netscape did for the Internet," Andreessen said.

ReplayTV was the DVR to own during the analog era. It offered built-in autoconfiguring ethernet, automatic user-oblivious commercial skip (using detection heuristics similar to those now employed by MythTV) and the ability to exchange show recordings over the internet. The last two features were potentially massively disruptive to the TV/movie industry and landed the ReplayTV people in court. The protracted legal battles drained the company's finances and attention, and in the end they consented to remove the coolest features from their newer units. By then Tivo, which always played well the media conglomerates, had taken most of the market by offering units with significantly less disruptive potential.

Complaining about the license fee is like complaining that for a measly 1/4 of what the USA spends per head, we get universal health care with no co-pay and fixed prescription costs.

And you may have to wait for health care. While not everyone in the US has access to good health care many international patients come to the US for diagnosis and surgery. In a way I find it weird that while people in northern US states cross the border to buy prescriptions in Canada, Canadians would can afford it go south to cross the border to have surgery in the US. The article "An expensive way to die - criticism of national health insurance" goes over some of this.

Falcon

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6712/is_3_210/ai_n28831382/

No idea regarding veracity, but this article says a phalanx will set you back from $6.5 to $10 million. This is assuming that the US/UK gov't would sell them to anyone....which ain't happening.

Picture a house with one of these posted on each corner of the roof....with one word each of GET OFF MY LAWN painted on them. Only cost you $40 million...plus whatever pockets you'd have to grease to be allowed to buy them.

Maybe you have seen them, Christian groups in the US have aired environmental ads on TV. Here's an article about the "four most important biblical passages for a Christian enviromentalism".

Falcon

I have to call bullshit on this. Microsoft has a very relaxed alcohol policy which basically boils down to don't let alcohol adversely affect the way you do your job. Alcohol is frequently provided at official and unofficial events on and off campus.

Also, Washington is the least religious and least churched state in America.

they should be able to pump the hot water out and back into the water system.

That hot water being introduced into the eco system messes it up.

Just think, you could have an entire city that doesn't need individual hot-water tanks!

Hot water tanks are an inefficient use of energy. They have to keep recycling on and off using a lot of energy. Now if solar water heaters are used they lower the electricity or gas that would otherwise be used. As would instant on water heaters. But heated water that's pumped out of a system can be used. Congeneration systems were used in New York City by Thomas Edison. He used the hot water from cooling his plants to heat building when it was cold. Northern Europe uses cogeneration a lot.

Falcon

Sorry, meant to add the link to the post above. Medieval Japanese Art of Decomposing Bodies Paintings. A morbid read, indeed.

I could see a jury being persuaded to ignore the law, though. Given a random set of 12 people, how many of them do you think have engaged in file sharing themselves?

Jury nullification is unlikely to work. Prosecutors and many judges dismiss potential jurors who believe in jury nullification. Judges even instruct jurors that they are required to decide the facts, was a law broken, and not to judge the law. In 1895 the US Supreme Court case Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 102 the justices rejected jury nullification.

Falcon

Actually, people have gotten into a lot of trouble for pictures like you describe.

Hollywood blockbusters almost always lose money, even the big movies everyone saw. Forrest Gump is an example with net loss of $60 million. This is not because they are not breaking even, this is because it's really just a creative accounting scam.

You shouldn't have to bet.... California's disproportionate federal tax burden and return on tax dollar are a hard, well-documented facts.

In 2002, Moody reports, the per capita federal tax burden in California was $7,313-or 116% of the national average. On the other hand, per capita federal spending in the state was only $5,592-or 88% of the national average. For every dollar California sent in taxes to Washington, D.C., it received only 76 cents in return.
Source: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200308/ai_n9240268

But once again, the GP is a smug, self-righteous ass who feels that he's been somehow wronged and that he is being forced to support CA. Of course, he probably doesn't realize that CA has been supporting many of the smaller states in hard-working "real" America for a very long time. Nor does he realize that much of the mess that we're currently in was created by the policies he likely supports.

Back on topic: I like black cars. This CARB policy is stupid, and I don't think the general populace will allow it.

the things you mention always work.

While admittedly much more often than antivirus software, and my reply was mostly in jest, those things can still impart a false sense of security:

• Gate malfunction probed in train crash
• Car collides with train at crossing
• Youtube video of mis-functioning crossing (dozens of videos on youtube (mostly with the gates stuck down) people will apparently videotape anything.)

Ok I'm too lazy^H^H^H^Hbusy to continue, but googling smoke detector malfunction would probably yield a story or two. BUt like I said, it was mostly in jest. And the "bridge out" thing, well, I needed a third item and couldn't think of anything better :-)

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6894/is_2_8/ai_n28410574

Though the article itself isn't the best, check out the introduction for references to many long-established results on this issue, the point being that media has a significant effect on its consumers.

The fact that we witness thousands upon thousands more deaths from various sources than our evolutionary ancestors is a very interesting phenomenon that's spawned many good papers.

And I ended my post implying that the (negative) effect of media is small compared to that of censorship - that's the speculation I'm guilty of, but I do believe it.

I have heard this argument SO OFTEN... And it is completely misguided.

Yes those lawsuits cost money, but they are on stuff that are not that expensive. I am talking about the real things that cost real money.

For example lawsuit malpractice insurance costs:

75 K

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0843/is_2_28/ai_84236557

Let's look at the costs of cancer treatment?

http://www.alixnorth.com/what-does-it-cost-have-cancer

$224,725

So that means a doctor can spread the costs across many patients, but since many get cancer this cost more than outweighs malpractice.

So who is the dumb FUCK NOW! Oh yes, YOU!

If you ever decided to run the numbers like I did you would actually see that I am right and you are wrong.

"As an aside, the US is only two states away from a constitutional convention. I recommend we get two more states on board and try to retake some power from the federal government. It's already far more powerful than intended."

If this is true (big IF), I think nothing would make me happier. Could you please post where you got this information from. I'm usually on top of all things political in the USA and this one has flown under the radar.

Seems to be mentioned on a lot of blogs, rather than mainstream news. That makes me take it with a grain of salt. Perhaps the states are calling conventions on different points. I thought I read something like that, and the 32 figure is over the balanced budget amendment (of course, the constitution could be tossed or revised in other ways).

Here, here, and here, though slightly less credible.

This is a pretty slow process, and happens at the state level, so I'm not shocked the national news has missed it. This magical 32 number keeps coming up, so I'm guessing there's something to it. I can't confirm it without some help, though. Any thoughts on who would potentially know?

Dude. I've read several of your posts on this article and I can't tell whether you're a) trolling or b) on crack.

Average age of Nobel Prize winners for economics is 67, for physics, 52, and for literature, it's 63 years old.

People do not get Nobel prizes to impress women. Are you a researcher? Until the age of at least 25 the average young researcher, aka student, aka fresh meat, is doing whatever makework their lab PI tells them to do, and possibly attempting to make notes for the odd bit of PhD research on the side. There is no glamour to that sort of work at all. After that is a postdoc, and that's not exactly Contact by Carl Sagan either. The student who is looking to impress women is better advised under most economic circumstances to go and get a job in industry that comes with perks and a company car.

Actually I don't doubt that your heart is in the right place on this discussion, and that you're arguing honestly from your own experiences, but much of what you are saying just doesn't fit very well with the realities of academia. Which, by the by, has academic standards, not male or female ones. Specific departments impose very gendered standards; academia itself, especially those areas that use blind peer review, are much better about these things...

The 9th Circuit is legal precedent, at least for cases within the 9th Circuit.... But here you go.

Some links, many of which are not from the 9th:
http://www.iphonereal.com/iphone_news/200808/08-11492.html
http://www.uslaw.com/library/Legal_Research/Oregon_9th_Circ_Mandatory_Arbitration_Unconscionable.php?item=221171
http://www.thisistech.com/2008/01/25/class-actions-t-mobiles-mandatory-arbitration-clause-ruled-unconscionable-lawsuits/
http://www.constructionweblinks.com/Resources/Industry_Reports__Newsletters/Apr_02_2007/cour.html
http://www.metnews.com/articles/2007/omel051507.htm
http://www.calbizlit.com/cal_biz_lit/2007/09/how-to-get-out-.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3898/is_200103/ai_n8951872
http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/trial-procedure-appellate-decisions/8133987-1.html
http://www.stephenmmurphy.com/pdfs/Hancock_article.pdf
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/3rd-Circuit-Deals-Blow-to-law-14460950.html
http://kruismediation.com/cgi-bin/adrcases.cgi?case=ADR20071031.htm
http://www.justanswer.com/questions/16oig-wisconsin-courts-interpret-term
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/11/prweb1556074.htm
http://www.chicagobusinesslitigationlawyerblog.com/2008/10/chicago_federal_district_court_1.html
http://www.rtoonline.com/Content/Article/Aug_06/NewJerseyBindingArbitration081106.asp

We also know that people are terrible at calculating long-term risk. See ozone hole, global cooling, global warming. Next on the block: climate change.

The French used to have a complete ban on encryption until recently. The UK in the mid-90s were pushing for a key escrow system, where all individuals would have to lodge a copy of their private key with the government, and were very close to succeeding. Instead we now have the RIPA, where you have to disclose your key when asked or go to jail. The only way to safely store a stranger's data on your machine is if it's encrypted and you have no access to the key. Even then ISPs are monitoring what you are downloading.

There can be plenty of reasons for allowing people to ssh through your machine, but I also would only do it for friends. I did it for one of my friends who wanted to be able to job search during lunch time but didn't want his employer to know he was looking. He wasn't breaking any laws or company rules, but wanted his privacy protected. However, like Idiomatick I would be happy to help anybody that had a good and convincing reason (though they would be in chroot).

Phillip.

The most efficiently run medical payment service in this country right now is medicare with over 95% efficiency in terms of money going to treatment vs. overhead.

I've found this report that specifically talks about how INEFFICIENT Medicare is and makes recommendations to change that.

This USA Today article complains that Medicare funds the vast majority of residency training in the USA. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a substantial amount of money that is not going to treatment as you said.

This report says fraud is costing in the billions. And this article says that fraud is a growing problem in Medicare costing $60 billion per year and says that fewer than 5%... that's 5% of claims are audited.

According to this Congressional Research Service report Medicare's budget is $420 billion for 2009. If $60 billion is just fraud, that means nearly 15% of Medicare's budget is NOT going to treatment not including all the rest of Medicare's expenses (funding residency, other misc overhead).

Sorry, but to say that Medicare is efficient is just plain wrong.

Do you really think genetic predisposition to drug addiction doesn't exist?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0847/is_n3_v14/ai_11129865

Actually the data format CDs have much better error protection than audio CDs.

This means that audio quality could be influenced by an error rate which would still allow you to read a complete data CD.

I know that it's always silly to try to predict the future, but here I go none the less. For the most part, all of the core computing applications have already been developed.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4070/is_2000_Jan/ai_59586526

Back in the day, many purchasers demanded that manufacturers of electronics had a secound source of components so you wouldn't get stuck with a product line you could no longer build. AMD was Intel's second source provider. This agreement went to court http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n1961_v39/ai_13734404 and the result was a forced agreement that meant AMD had access to Intel intel.

Maybe not *pure* wood pulp, but after that wood pulp's been processed and bleached, it's not as safe as you initially indicate. See this reference for details...

Yes, the process of turning wood pulp into bleached paper can produce chemicals that have an amount of toxicity. Small amounts of dioxins, for example, are produced when chlorine is used as part of the bleaching process. However, it would take quite a large amount of bleached paper to be of any danger to a person. The real risk to the older bleaching process was to the environment downstream of the paper mill. This is where the dioxins would concentrate and cause harm to plants and animals. The bleached paper itself was usually pretty harmless.

Anyways, most modern paper mills no longer use chlorine in their process. Instead they use oxygen, ozone, and hydrogen peroxide to bleach in a way that produces a much cleaner and environmentally-friendly product. This means that dioxins are no longer being produced in the majority of paper mills.

Wood pulp is not toxic to plants. It's mostly simple lignin and cellulose which most plants will grow in quite happily. The reason grass doesn't grow under trees is that the shade from the tree is not good for the growth of grass. Even the "shade" varieties of grass can only tolerate partial shade.

Maybe not *pure* wood pulp, but after that wood pulp's been processed and bleached, it's not as safe as you initially indicate. See this reference for details...

Compare that to solar $2.9 Billion subsidy package for California alone.

Thanks. Well it was proposed the state give subsidies to nuclear power as well: "these nuclear subsidies would cost over $2 billion. " This says "In California they have brought the cost of windpower down to 4 cents per kilowatt. (14) The National Energy Board of Canada says that windpower, now costs between $50 and $100 per megawatt/hour (MW/h), and expects that it will be down to $40 per MW/h by 2020." I don't know about that myself, I'd like to see where they came up with that, where I live a lot of electricity comes from the wind but I pay about 10 cents a KWH.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't install wind/solar, but I believe that nuclear should be a larger portion of the solution.

Unless and until I see hard evidence storage of waste won't be a problem I don't accept nuclear. Until energy storage is solved I'd rather have natural gas power plants serve as a baseload.

Falcon

... Especially since metals behave differently in microgravity, possibly leading to new alloys and manufacturing processes not possible or practical on Earth.

Sorry everyone, Wendy's had the Superbar long before anyone else.

Seriously though, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Who gives a shit if the "Superbar" looks like the "Dock" or if one car looks like another or if three movies came out this year with suspiciously similar premises.

My (well, not mine really, as I can't vote) Prime Minister reads manga and his ex-Defense Minister builds plastic models of battleships and fighter planes, but they are far, far, far from *AWESOME*!

Nexicon, Inc., formerly Cyco.Net, Inc. (OTCBB:CYKE), a leading provider of secure and efficient networking and communication solutions, today announced the launch of two recently formed strategic partnerships, with Butch Maki & Associates and John Badal of Badal & Associates, to develop further private and institutional business relationships in the homeland security, network security, and telecommunications industries.

Butch Maki & Associates is an experienced team of lobbyists, consultants, media professionals, grassroots specialists, and bipartisan political professionals with long-time contacts at all levels of federal, state, and local government. Founded in 1992 by Walter "Butch" Maki, the group has close contacts with political and grassroots leaders and will be instrumental to Nexicon in penetrating government institutions that may benefit from the Company's offerings in network security.

John Badal, who in October 2004 retired from the office of President for Qwest New Mexico Corporation, is one of the pre-eminent consultants in the telecommunications industry, with strong industry ties and contacts with key decision makers in both small and large corporate entities in the telecommunications field throughout the U.S.

Source

The stock Microsoft owned of Apple was non voting stock. And though I couldn't confirm it I read where Microsoft sold it in 2002 and made a profit.

Apple's products do not matter, when one buys Apple, they buy the "iImage" not the "iProduct".

I switched from Windows to Mac OS X because I was able to buy my MacBook Pro cheaper than another laptop that is capable of what I wanted to do with it.

Falcon

Actually, all computer parts and electronics sellers are abusive, to some degree, in my experience. The problem was just that Circuit City was worse that others. My experience of them was that no one who worked there had any technical knowledge.

CompUSA was worse than Circuit City in my experience. (That's pronounced com-POOZ-a to show the proper low respect.) The predictable happened. The title of that article is: "CompUSA closes shop".

Incredible Universe had a unique formula. They abused their sales people; I was told that and observed that. The predictable happened: Incredible Universe crashes to earth. Actually it crashed to under the earth.

I remember Future Shop in the U.S. as being a confused place. The predictable happened in 1999: Future Shop closing U.S. stores.

Most of the problem with computer retail stores is the same as with any technology company: There are managers who think they can run a technology company without actually understanding their products.

Does anyone know of an online computer and electronics equipment seller that is not abusive?