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Here's my latest Snowden / Binney 2016 bumper sticker art, suitable for printing at 2.75" x 5" cropped size plus a .125" bleed, 300 DPI, on vinyl:
PNG
Vector (LibreOffice Draw)

This is my original artwork, CC BY-NC-SA, so print a pile and spread them around if you like. I use psprint.com, and I recommend searching "vinyl bumper stickers" on DuckDuckGo, where psprint is usually running a coupon in the search results. I haven't received the color proofs for this version yet, but these are corrected from a previous batch and should be pretty good.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with DuckDuckGo or PSPrint, and Snowden/Binney is (perhaps unfortunately) neither a real nor a realistic campaign. This is just for giggles.

Here's my latest Snowden / Binney 2016 bumper sticker art, suitable for printing at 2.75" x 5" cropped size plus a .125" bleed, 300 DPI, on vinyl:
PNG
Vector (LibreOffice Draw)

This is my original artwork, CC BY-NC-SA, so print a pile and spread them around if you like. I use psprint.com, and I recommend searching "vinyl bumper stickers" on DuckDuckGo, where psprint is usually running a coupon in the search results. I haven't received the color proofs for this version yet, but these are corrected from a previous batch and should be pretty good.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with DuckDuckGo or PSPrint, and Snowden/Binney is (perhaps unfortunately) neither a real nor a realistic campaign. This is just for giggles.

Unrelated server crash. Try this one. I'll have the original URL back up as soon as I get this new box built.

Sorry, I only support candidates who can provide me with vector-based artwork.

Here you go: LibreOffice Draw format.

Looks like ".Snowden" at first glance. Reduce the space between the i and the dot.

Thanks for the tip. Done. Same url.

Snowden / Binney 2016!

That image is my original artwork (with friendly tips from Slashdot user Indigo), copyright 2014 Robert Bushman, licensed under CC by-nc-sa. It is properly sized for a 2.75" by 5" sticker with .125" bleed at 300 dpi. I'm getting them printed at psprint.com (I recommend doing a search for "vinyl bumper stickers", since they often have a coupon running on Duck Duck Go). I haven't seen my physical proofs yet, but the on-screen color conversion looked good to me. Please feel free to print a stack and spread them far and wide.

Here's Snowden/Binney. I'm a little frustrated with the extra negative space below the "den" in Snowden, because Binney's name is too short, and the tall "i" and hanging "y" are messing with me, and I'm not a graphic designer. I've moved and resized everything but I keep coming back to the original layout. I'm tempted to change their roles on the ticket because Binney/Snowden fits great. grumble grumble

I guess I just have to remember that I'm making a statement, not an actual political campaign -- it need not be perfect to achieve its goal.

But top-tier incomes are really unstable, they go down fast in a downturn and up fast in an upturn, so federal revenue takes it on the chin from that group during times like 2008-2011.

Is that a bad thing or a good thing? If the ideal case is for taxation to decrease during lean times, and to increase during times of plenty, that might make a rather nice automatic adjustment.

That's probably the dominant factor in changes federal revenue as a percentage of GOP these days, now that 1% of tax payers pay about 1/3 of all income taxes, and that noise drowns out any signal we might get from changes in top marginal rate.

Also worth noting that in the 1950s and 1960s, the period of greatest economic growth in our history, we had a much higher top marginal rate. As corollary evidence, consider that a lower Gini index (less income concentration) correlates to a higher GDP per capita (PPP, product per person) all over the world.

I don't care about equality for its own sake, I'm a heartless economist: Whatever maximizes long run GDP is the best answer; it makes the rich richest, and it makes the poor richest, and it makes everyone in between richest, in the long run. That is the only objective definition of "good" in my world. There's a lot of unfounded beliefs on both sides of the argument, but the data, if you look at it without presuming to know the answer, points pretty hard in one direction.

Thank you! Just yesterday, in fact, I submitted this one for an initial 25 prints as proofs, and if they come out right I'll be printing 2,000 to hand out at Burning Man. What do you think of Snowden Doctorow versus Snowden Binney? The upside to Doctorow is name recognition and the approachability of his writing, particularly Little Brother and Homeland. The upside of using Binney, of course, is that more people should know what he has done for his country.

Your thoughts? (and if you ping me off list at bob at thrhahxhehl.com remove all the h's, I'll mail you a few)

They weren't "given" money. They organized land, labor and capital in such a way as to create wealth for themselves, their partners/investors, employees and customers that would not otherwise have existed.

That's only perfeclty true if the system is perfectly efficient. If the system is biased against the wealthy, they get paid less than they earn. If it is biased in their favor, they get paid more than they earn. Both cases, interestingly, have occurred in the US within the past 70 years. Check the IRS SOI for back records on income concentration, then compare that to GDP per capita growth rate -- if we have increasing concentration and a decreasing growth rate, it would mean we are paying the wealthy more and getting less growth -- ie: inefficiently distorted in favor of the wealthy. For a second dimension along which to measure, check GDP per capita versus Gini of the world's nations. Here's my chart on PPC/Gini, and I've done the math with the SOI -- but don't take my word for it. Do the research yourself to confirm.

PDF Form (easier to read without a decent text editor)

Here are three links to the text form of the brief:

On One of My Boxes

On Reference Blog

On Pastebin

By most any metric, European nations have much lower income inequality, and they also score better on many quality of life metrics.

They also score quite well on GDP per capita. :)

Link to a chart I made. (note: PPP = GDP Per Capita, Gini is a measure of income concentration)

Roughly speaking, GDP per capita is inversely related to Gini down to about Gini 0.30. We are about 0.42, and a pretty extreme outlier in the first world. Below 0.30 there isn't enough data to say if/where the inflection point is. To me, that means we should be running some tests down there (at a flatter income distribution level, maybe Gini 0.20 - 0.25). Not because I believe flatter income distribution is right for some personal moral belief, but because the data shows that it is more productive -- that it would benefit everyone, rich and poor alike.

France has a much lower GDP per capita than we do.

They are only about 10% below us, higher than England, and well into the "first world" class. Our edge over France is small enough that it can easily be explained by greater natural resources per capita (same reason Australia is running so high right now). France has also been chasing us on income tax distribution policy (see Piketty/Saez 2007), so their income distribution is not as flat as most of the highest PPP countries.

If they started working themselves to exhaustion the way we Americans do, it would close the GDP per capita gap significantly.

I do not immediately find that statement credible, but if you have evidence to support the claim I would like to see it. Based on the limited data on the topic that I have seen, I think overwork leads to inefficient production and hence reduced PPP.

The purpose of maximizing PPP is to give all citizens as much resources as possible with which to do as they please. Giving them the freedom to use their resources as they please is what gives them quality of life. I do fairly well, for example, and choose to spend less hours working for a paycheck and more hours working on my own projects (and posting on Slashdot, haha).

Quality of life metrics, however, must inherently reflect what the person setting up the metric feels is "quality of life". My Dad is in his seventies, has more money than he knows what to do with, and still works sixty hour weeks because he loves his work and believes it is important (he's a corrosion engineer). To him that is quality of life. Who am I to judge?

I think you may have assumed that I am a right winger because I believe in maximizing PPP. That is not the case. I believe in maximizing PPP because it helps everyone in the long run. I am a hard-core everyone-winger. Right now, as it happens, that means we should decrease Gini (and I have a lot more data to back that statement up than just that one chart) -- but that doesn't mean I'm left wing either. If we go too far someday, and the data shows that we should increase Gini to benefit everyone, I'd be on the other side of the argument.

By most any metric, European nations have much lower income inequality, and they also score better on many quality of life metrics.

They also score quite well on GDP per capita. :)

Link to a chart I made. (note: PPP = GDP Per Capita, Gini is a measure of income concentration)

Roughly speaking, GDP per capita is inversely related to Gini down to about Gini 0.30. We are about 0.42, and a pretty extreme outlier in the first world. Below 0.30 there isn't enough data to say if/where the inflection point is. To me, that means we should be running some tests down there (at a flatter income distribution level, maybe Gini 0.20 - 0.25). Not because I believe flatter income distribution is right for some personal moral belief, but because the data shows that it is more productive -- that it would benefit everyone, rich and poor alike.

France has a much lower GDP per capita than we do.

They are only about 10% below us, higher than England, and well into the "first world" class. Our edge over France is small enough that it can easily be explained by greater natural resources per capita (same reason Australia is running so high right now). France has also been chasing us on income tax distribution policy (see Piketty/Saez 2007), so their income distribution is not as flat as most of the highest PPP countries.

If they started working themselves to exhaustion the way we Americans do, it would close the GDP per capita gap significantly.

I do not immediately find that statement credible, but if you have evidence to support the claim I would like to see it. Based on the limited data on the topic that I have seen, I think overwork leads to inefficient production and hence reduced PPP.

The purpose of maximizing PPP is to give all citizens as much resources as possible with which to do as they please. Giving them the freedom to use their resources as they please is what gives them quality of life. I do fairly well, for example, and choose to spend less hours working for a paycheck and more hours working on my own projects (and posting on Slashdot, haha).

Quality of life metrics, however, must inherently reflect what the person setting up the metric feels is "quality of life". My Dad is in his seventies, has more money than he knows what to do with, and still works sixty hour weeks because he loves his work and believes it is important (he's a corrosion engineer). To him that is quality of life. Who am I to judge?

I think you may have assumed that I am a right winger because I believe in maximizing PPP. That is not the case. I believe in maximizing PPP because it helps everyone in the long run. I am a hard-core everyone-winger. Right now, as it happens, that means we should decrease Gini (and I have a lot more data to back that statement up than just that one chart) -- but that doesn't mean I'm left wing either. If we go too far someday, and the data shows that we should increase Gini to benefit everyone, I'd be on the other side of the argument.

Real geeks hack their tech. And when it comes to cooking, you can buy something that is half as good as what you can build, for twice the price -- as this ridiculous article handily demonstrates. Food hacking (or Modernist Cuisine, if you prefer) is a very big field these days. Want a great steak? Start with sous vide immersion cooking to get the perfect medium rare, then hit it with a flamethrower for the char. Play with your food.

Immersion Cooker (about $100 all-in):
http://beach.traxel.com/img/hopped-up/whole-rig.jpg

Weedburner Charring (about $35 at Harbor Freight):
http://beach.traxel.com/img/sous-vide/weedburner-char.jpg

Here's some more info on building your own meat jacuzzi:
http://qandabe.com/2011/70-diy-sous-vide-universal-controller/

Real geeks hack their tech. And when it comes to cooking, you can buy something that is half as good as what you can build, for twice the price -- as this ridiculous article handily demonstrates. Food hacking (or Modernist Cuisine, if you prefer) is a very big field these days. Want a great steak? Start with sous vide immersion cooking to get the perfect medium rare, then hit it with a flamethrower for the char. Play with your food.

Immersion Cooker (about $100 all-in):
http://beach.traxel.com/img/hopped-up/whole-rig.jpg

Weedburner Charring (about $35 at Harbor Freight):
http://beach.traxel.com/img/sous-vide/weedburner-char.jpg

Here's some more info on building your own meat jacuzzi:
http://qandabe.com/2011/70-diy-sous-vide-universal-controller/

GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said, "Class warfare may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics."

Class warfare, in the strict sense of guns and bombs, is -- like all civil war -- bad for the economy. Labor resources spending time shooting at each other, and getting shot, is potential productivity lost. Similarly, spending time on arguments that have no basis in reality is a waste of resources. There is evidence, however, that reducing the Gini (a measure of income disparity -- higher Gini means higher disparity) in the United States would increase the GDP growth rate. Here is one example set of data:

http://beach.traxel.com/img/gdp-gini-4.png

America's Gini has been rising steadily since the early 1970's (it started before Reagan, because the tax brackets didn't keep up with the rapid inflation resulting from the oil embargo). Our Gini is now high enough to make our PPP (GDP per capita) an outlier. Most nations with our level of income disparity are third world nations. Only Hong Kong and SIngapore -- hybrid economies which mix successful free market economies with the stark poverty resulting from communism -- are in the first world ballpark and have Ginis as high as ours.

One possible reason is this: In any economic system there is an optimal market price to pay for any resource. If that economic system overpays for some resource or class of resources, it will operate less efficiently. There may be systemic biases in place which cause us to pay more for the labor (and/or capital lending) of our wealthy than their labor (and/or capital lending) is worth. Of course the chart above is insufficient to show the causal relationship, but it would explain why our PPP (GDP per capita) growth rate has fallen during the same period that our Gini has been increasing (I have more charts that show the temporal relationship, but they are not yet ready for publication).

If, in fact, the increasing Gini is a cause of falling PPP, then increasing the taxation on upper income brackets would increase the GDP growth rate. If that is the case, and assuming one believes (as I do) that the ideal free market is GDP maximizing, there is only one possible explanation: some degree of progressive taxation actually increases the accuracy of our approximation of the free market, by offsetting a systemic bias.

Disagree? Good, I'd love to see your empirical evidence. Show me the data.

True for me. I made the jump this past January. 2009 my company said no raises for anyone (except executives, of course). 2010 they claimed the same thing, I declined, they offered me an insulting pittance, and away I went.

Cut my expenses to the bone, picked up some contract work, and now doing economic research most of the time. Getting ready to publish my first paper, if the vetting goes well. Also took some time to do my first fine woodworking -- produced two nice footstools(*), which I gave to my parents.

Damned fine thing. I strongly recommend it if you can bzip your budget.

* http://beach.traxel.com/img/footstool-ts/footstool-with-cushion.jpg

However, if you wanted to build a small UAV that could accurately provide location and elevation data, could navigate correctly, and had a proper flight control/autopilot system, there's no way around hard work and math.

What if you wanted something less? What if you wanted the least expensive thing that could contribute to the total mission? (with the real UAVs handling the important operations)

GPS navigation is very cool, but for a military UAV, any number of issues can arise that can cause a loss of GPS data.

What if you had 50 of them, and 49 lost their data?

Most COTS electronics cannot handle weather, vibration, or sudden acceleration well, and quality costs.

What if you make loss part of the plan?

Mistakes kill, and there are no shortcuts.

Mistakes with UAVs that are considered unreliable as a mission parameter do not kill, so there are lots of shortcuts.

If I'm putting together a real UAV, here's my standard stack:

What would be your standard stack if you were putting together a fake UAV? (one that flew around, took pictures, had a wonky autopilot, and crashed occasionally)

The system is enclosed in a carbon fiber case;

Yegads! Rip that thing off and toss it -- adds weight, and all it does is protect $100 worth of electronics. Just shrink-wrap the board and mount it with rubber bands. :)

Basically, what I'm saying is precision and reliability are not cheap.

Basically, what I'm saying is precision and reliability are not necessary for every mission, particularly if you have high redundancy and the missions are exploratory.

Aviation software is the most rigorously tested and verified software in the world

I worked with an aviation software engineer from Boeing for a while. He was freaky smart and a little scary. Don't use that software, use the Open Source stuff that crashes occasionally -- there's no people on these, and you leave the critical mission stuff to the real UAVs.

Anyway, hope that gives you a little glimpse into the world of someone who has done real UAV work. :)

Definitely very cool stuff. Here's my incinerator, which cost significantly less than a waste management facility (the savings was roughly enough to buy a waste management facility):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB7LB7gXrm8
http://beach.traxel.com/incinerator/set_one/incinerator.html

Anyway, hope that gives you a little glimpse into the world of someone who has done real minimalist engineering. :)

Also consider:
  - Most influential rifle in modern history: AK
  - Most influential armored vehicle in modern history: Sherman
  - Most influential naval vessel in modern history: Liberty Ship

What do those all have in common? I would posit that it is that they are among the worst in their class, except for being cheap, disposable, and plentiful. The United States is awesome at the super-high-tech stuff, but I think we're even better at bodging.

Another way to look at it: Is the perfect the enemy of the good?

Actually the Great Depression occurred in large part because in the 1920s the Secretary of the Treasury was the de facto head of the Frederal Reserve. As such he, along with the administrations in the 1920s, were interested in a loose money policy which set up the great fall in 1929. The Bank Act of 1935 gave the fed its own Chairman and a revised charter. It also neutered the powers of the branches to just day-to-day operations.

I think the history of recessions in the 20th century speaks for itself. Most recently we were on the brink of global financial collapse, but economic indicators have signaled we've already pulled out of the recession. That's less than a year long.

The Fed did in fact contribute to the latest recession, but it wasn't about money supply. It was about keeping the interest rates incredibly low, a problem compounded by the Republican Administration's refusal to enact stricter regulation. This is a GREAT article explaining the details: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/01/081201fa_fact_cassidy

I seriously cannot understand your position. Nearly every developed country in the world has a central bank. It's absolutely vital to have a body independent from the shenanigans and partisan politics that take place in Congress. Monetary policy and its effects are well understood and much more predictable than the effects of fiscal policy.

If not the Federal Reserve then who do you want in charge of monetary policy?

There are some other things I have to take issue with. First of all, the Fed doesn't print money. That's the National Treasury's job. The Federal Reserve simply buys government bonds for a small price, or sells them, creating an increase or decrease in interest rates.

Furthermore, your accusation's of the Fed's true purpose and corruption are amusing. The Office of Inspector General is charged with auditing The Federal Reserve, and Congress can directly force The Federal Reserve to release its records after 5 years if the Fed tries to withhold them.

In addition, I will quote another website: "The general impression one gets is that the Federal Reserve System is owned by international bankers who get all the Federal Reserve income. This is just not true.

The Federal Reserve System is headed by the Board of Governors which is a government agency (look it up:http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/ind⦠) There is no structure for private ownership at this level. The Governors are appointed by the president and confirmed by congress and are forbid my law from having a financial stake in any bank. All the B-of-G employees are considered government employees.

The Fed branches, however, can be considered highly regulated member-owned corporations. (look it up: http://www.hoovers.com/free/search/simpl⦠) By law, all member banks must buy shares into their local branch. Only domestic banks can be members. They vote for 6 of their 9 board members (the other 3 are appointed by the BofG). Each bank gets one vote so J.P. Morgan has as many votes as the First National Bank of Pocatella, ID.

For sheer political influence, large banks, corporations, and foreign interests are better off lobbying congress."

As for the national debt, if you take a look at this chart: http://traxel.com/deficit/deficit-percentage-50-years.png it's self-evident when the greatest increases of our national debt were incurred. Generally during the Reagen and Bush I administration, as well as the Bush II administration.

Keep in mind our approximation of the federal deficit today adds the cost of the war, which Bush Jr. kept "off the books".

I think it's also self-evident that the Democratic Clinton administration was the first one to experience a surplus since '69.

Really, any argument for the fiscal sanity of Republicans can be easily ignored.

If you Read The Frakking Article, it states that Bing is now returning non-biased results, due to their old biased system being exposed publicly.

I just now (8:30 AM PST 6 Aug 2009) did the Pepsi Challenge:

http://beach.traxel.com/img/bing-google.png

Could be a click pumping system out there somewhere is trying to make Microsoft look bad, though, so take it with a grain of salt. That would explain MS fixing the problem, then the results percolating back to the top. Me? I still suspect bias. If not, it's a good chance for MS to demonstrate whether they are capable of handling SEO poisoning.

Just so you don't think I'm a complete idiot, though, I do favor the income tax structure from the 30s to 50s, which I think is one of the big factors in the recovery from the crash and the WWII debt. I also think it was a big factor in creating the broadly stable economic base that kept us expanding until Reagan and the Neocons took a giant steaming dump on the idea of having a broad-based economy, and substituted party-hat fiscal liberalness that has been hiding our decline for 25 years while the caste system gets firmly entrenched.

To more clearly explain what I'm talking about:
http://beach.traxel.com/img/1954-gdp-adjusted-wikipedia.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Code_of_1954

Here you go. here is a second. How do you figure that our deficit actually went down under GWB? Or are you doing fox news math?

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the profile - I don't know enough of the full story yet.

The following, however, does seem a little wrong:
http://traxel.com/tmp/obama-myspace-2.png

I do not have a MySpace account. I have not ever logged in. On this computer, I have all MySpace cookies blocked. That is, I have no network on MySpace. It is not possible that, "Barack is in my extended network".

Don't take my word for it - flush your cookies and see for yourself.

Really? I love [equation editor]. It's one of the things I miss most in OpenOffice.

Missing it because you don't like the one in OOo, or because you didn't know it was there? If the latter, click File >> New >> Formula.

Here's a screenshot.

Enjoy!

Hmmm, browbeating tone, steadfast refusal to consider whether there may in fact be a problem here, posting as AC... do you work at Sun perchance? If so, I fear your goal is to win the argument, not to understand the problem (a goal which is well served by your hostile tone), but I'll make one more attempt anyway.

Since you seem focused on attacking the specific form of Dr. Kabutz's example, rather than considering the general problem, I've coded a quick example that is a bit more real-world like.

Autobox.java

Suppose I wrote a posterize function as shown in the above, and placed it as a static method in a color utility class. I then use that method in a section of code that processes 1600x1200 images (yes, I'm sure there are optimizations that could be done to the posterize method above, but let's assume it's close enough, for the sake of argument) (and yes, I know I'm not processing the alpha channel, but work with me here, OK?). All is well, the image processor is working as fast as I need for my case - I'm processing 5 photos per second on a machine just like the one I'm writing from now.

Now suppose some young developer, the very sort of developer Sun is reaching out to with the programmer-friendliness additions in Tiger, comes along and says, "hey, k3wl, we can use autoboxing here and change two of the three parameters in this method signature to Objects without altering any of the invoking code!" And so he changes the signature of the posterize method to the signature you see in my example as posterizeObj. Performance of the method is cut in half, despite zero code changes except the autoboxing.

So, from your ivory tower at Sun (or whatever ivory tower you live in where every developer has a deep understanding of compiler de-optimization), can you tell me where I went wrong? Should I not give apprentices full access to the source code repository? What if he's not an apprentice, just a newly converted SmallTalker who thinks everything should be an object and doesn't understand the performance problem?

Perhaps there should be a comment on the posterize method saying, "Don't change this to autoboxing, it's a high performance method!" But doesn't that beg the question; if, as of JDK 1.5, I have to add more comments to keep other developers from breaking my code without the compiler telling me, is it really more programmer-friendly?

I find it interesting that so many will try to argue the record deficits are low when expressed relative to GDP, without looking at the data. Here is one
And this one includes Federal spending as a percentage of GDP.
In both cases, the GWB spending is not only record on total, but nearing as a percentage of GDP. In fact, only during WWII (when we had a manufactuering base) and Regans first term has it been higher.

and will refuse to sell you a license no matter how much you offer

False. See question 2.

As for the rest of your post: Like most modern corporations, you seem opposed to competition. It is a shame that corporatists like you have lost sight of the meaning of free market capitalism (in which competition, of all types, is sacred). It is causing the fall of the American empire. You sicken me.

The Republican Party has figured out that they can buy votes from the uneducated. After the last election, Bush handed out $300 Treasury checks left and right after telling people throughout the campaign that it was their money due (to the budget surplus). He never discussed the national debt or the fact that over 25% of all federal taxes collected pay interest on that debt. He never suggested paying down that debt first and then cutting taxes after it was paid down.

I was brought up to believe that the Republican party was the party of fiscal conservancy (maintaining a balanced budget). I believe fiscal conservancy is a good thing - one of the most important elements in the long run health of the economy. As such, for a long time I was a staunch Republican.

I am still a strong fiscal conservative, and the deficit records over the past 25 years were disturbing to me - it felt like the Republican party had abandoned its fiscal conservancy. But I wasn't sure, so I did an analysis. The troubling fact is that the Republican party no longer appears to support fiscal conservancy as a party policy.

I believe Reagan's first term liberal fiscal policy was the correct response to runaway inflation and unemployment, and the economy did stabilize. But it seems like they forgot that after taking such strong corrective action, you have to reign it in. In 1983 or 1984, when the economy started surging ahead, he should have nailed down a few years of surplus to pay for the party. They are no longer the party of fiscal conservancy.

I feel abandoned, because neither party now clearly supports fiscal conservancy, and yet it is one of the most important issues to me. John McCain is a fiscal conservative, and a Republican. Bill Clinton was a fiscal conservative, and a Democrat. Neither seems to be representative of the heart of his party. Kerry doesn't seem much of a fiscal conservative, and Bush is way off the deep end of fiscal liberalism.

The worst part is that I fear most Americans don't even know what fiscal conservative means. I fear most think, "Higher taxes and lower spending? That's bad!" I'd vote for anyone who said he or she plans to raise taxes and lower spending.

But KDE is far more configurable, so I like it better.

I use GNOME, almost entirely because of the keybinding capability offered by Sawfish. Is there a KDE equivalent? I'd like to spend more time with KDE, but I have to be able to control minimize/maximize, change desktop pane, and fire arbitrary shell commands all from user configurable keychords (my RSI is bad enough without having to use the rat). I'm guessing it's possible in KDE, but I haven't found out how.

Here's a screenshot of my current config.

1: Synchronization.

This is slow. Really slow.

I think your test was flawed. Please see here for a test showing one popular usage of synchronization (lazy initializers). One million cycles takes about 30 milliseconds longer (a hair more than twice as long) for the synchronized version as for the fastsynched (effectively unsynchronized after the first call) version. Unsynchronized actually came out slower, showing that compiler behaviour is probably a bigger issue.

30 milliseconds per one million cycles. The extra 6 lines of code (and their extra defect opportunities) cannot be justified in any but the most extreme performance optimization situation.

Block inbound SMTP from AOL. Set a cutoff date, nofity all of your users, and stand firm. The further they get down this path the more accepted this practice will become. Once this practice becomes accepted, it is entirely likely that other protocols will begin being blocked for other reasons (suppose the RIAA suggests that AOL block all connections to non-commercial HTTP servers to avoid piracy liability).

It is not unreasonable to see this as the first step in the stratification of the Internet into corporate sanctioned, generally accessible servers and cordoned-off slums. This is every bit as dangerous, if not more so, than government censorship.

Note: it will anger your users. I know, because it angered my users. The biggest problem was that they did not understand why. I've posted a FAQ to address their most common questions.

If we give an inch now, later they will take a yard. Better to endure a little pain now than to try to stand against the tide in a year or two.

I use Gnome/Sawfish because I love the keybinding flexibility. I haven't found a way to get this much control over keybindings with KDE. There are some commands that can be bound, but they're pretty limited, and you are limited to one universal meta key.

Is there an easy way to get the same variety of commands and unlimited chord selection with KDE that I'm missing?

Here is a pretty picture of prior art. This is from a project spearheaded by my friend Tom. We did it in 2000, and the words in the nodes are from web pages about The Simpsons. The Simpsons nodes had readily separated themselves from the monster truck nodes and the professional wresting nodes.

The entire caching mechanism is LGPL'ed, you can pull it down from http://traxel.com/oss/. The call is in the Cache.manageCacheSize() method. I consider it well timed because it occurs right after expired objects are removed from the cache. I'll have my email address up on the site soon, if you want to make changes use bobnospam@nospamtraxel.com.