Slashdot Mirror

most Apple users (and I use the term 'most' in the sense of 'all but one of the Apple users that I know') don't need Photoshop, or even MS Paint. They buy Macs purely because they're so desperate to differentiate themselves that they'll spend any amount (the more the better,

I know exactly one person who bought a Mac based on aesthetics.

I know two people who bought a Mac because they'd only ever used Macs, and didn't want to deal with learning PCs.

I know seven people, directly, who are quite technically-minded, and bought a Mac because the only other real choice was Linux, and the Mac is physically sexier (and there was a decent deal on iMacs), and it will run other software they occasionally want/need, like Photoshop.

If real, useful communication that's what actually ends up taking place at these conferences (rather than just a lot of grant-money-funded boozing, as happened at the only one I attended) then that's awesome. But unless this was literally a 'team meeting' for all the contributors, I can't see it being quite that important.

Given that this was Joomla, you may have a point... I do wish that thing would die.

But I've seen far more conferences in the BarCamp fashion -- there may be pizza, but no real wining/dining, and no real room for people who aren't actually contributing.

Even the ones I haven't been to -- I saw a bunch of MerbCamp presentations -- frankly, many of the people there had Macs, and most of them did present something interesting.

Maybe it's a recent phenomenon, or I'm just choosing my conferences carefully?

I went through a similar learning curve when I left university - it was a shock to realise that not only was my boss telling me that it doesn't MATTER how batfuck ugly the code is, if it does what the customer wants and the customer is happy, then that's fine... but that he was right.

That's actually not quite what I'm talking about, and isn't entirely true.

Aesthetics and clean implementation are for us, the engineers, not something that matters a jot for the end user as long as it fills their needs.

Correct. However, as thedailywtf shows repeatedly, aesthetics and clean implementation matter. If the code is buttfuck-ugly, it's also likely to be too inflexible. The customer doesn't think they care whether it's flexible, until their requirements change, or we discover that we misinterpreted one.

Granted, this can be taken too far in the other direction, with "soft coding", and various other attempts to extract "business logic" and make it easier for the customer to change it without coming back to the programmer, etc.

However, somewhere between that is a balance. And yes, aesthetics matter -- you don't want to spend all day debating the prettiest way to code something, but given two equally valid (technically speaking) ways of doing something, code like a girl.

The communication you're espousing is the only way to actually achieve that.

But it is also useful between developers, for the reasons listed above.

All my (admittedly somewhat trollish) post was aiming at was that people who buy Macs to try and make themselves feel special are the same kind of people that would go to a conference for the same reason, so their presence at a conference doesn't automatically imply tech savviness.

Fair enough. My reply was written with some amount of ignorance -- I don't actually know anyone like that. The one person I know who bought a Mac for looks alone is a graphic designer -- no way they would be at this kind of conference.

If you bought his kindle from him would you be able to buy ebooks from the kindle store to put on the kindle that was initially bought by him?

Are you saying that if some generous soul on slashdot wanted to buy him an ebook from the kindle store he would be able to load it?

Because if either of these things are no longer possible then the value of his kindle has gone down, and if neither are possible in any kindle then its a pretty poor system and not worth buying into.

see there is a subtle difference from him being barred from borders and say his granny not being able to buy a book at borders as a gift for his birthday.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hacks/kindle-drm-hacked-that-was-easy-333415.php

seems to suggest the serial number is locked to the users device so if amazon choose to end his account the kindles pretty much barred too.

I'm not sure if there is much of a saving on books either, where i could compare, Amazon seemed to sell the paperback and the electronic version for the same price.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10196424-38.html is interesting amazon using the DMCA to stop nonkindle books being used on the kindle unsuccessfully http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1158727&cid=27172053

perhaps a more worrying trend is that amazon will not support encrypted mobipocket books on the kindle, perhaps rightly but don't amazon own mobipocket books too?

i'm not so sure if having a wireless device that updates itself at amazons command is that great if they don't respect their customers, i guess Jeff Bezos http://www.martinmanley.typepad.com/jam_side_down/2009/03/billionaire-amazon-ceo-works-a-week-in-his-own-warehouse.html doesn't look much like Darth Vader but could he say the line I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it still further...

Who's toy is it his or Jeff Bezos?

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/media_law_prof_blog/2009/03/the-first-circuit-has-reversed-itself-in-the-noonan-case-ruling-that-the-plaintiff-presented-sufficient-grounds-on-which-to.html This is actual case law in Massachusetts from this year. So, yes, the truth can be defamatory.

To GLBTs, it is as if society asked, "Is being blue-eyed a choice" as a precursor to determining whether or not blue-eyed individuals should be held to a lower social and legal status than non-blue-eyed individuals.

Interesting. What if the more analogous question were instead, say, the choice to join a cult full of and/or run by abusive nutjobs and its relation to the social/legal status of the individual and their "rights" in regard to affairs and civil constructs such as marriage, divorce and child custody?

Your statement above is misleading, because we have three categories to contend with. We have things that cannot (absent GREAT medical intervention or not at all in most cases) be changed about people. These include things like inherent eye color, tendency toward baldness, height, and medical conditions like diabetes. We have things that can be changed to a certain degree, either with intervention or practice - mode of dress, posture, speech patterns, hair/skin/eye coloration (with makeup or dyes or colored contact lenses). We then have things that people have, inasmuch as their mental state allows, complete control over - what religion to follow, how observant they are, whether they obey traffic laws, and on.

The question under debate (which we do not have an answer on, unlike the eye color question) is actually two questions in sequence:
- Whether homosexuality falls into the first, second, or third category from above.
- Whether, dependent somewhat on the answer to the previous question, society has an interest (based on there being more good than harm, overall, to society) in the promotion of homosexual pairings.

You insist that the answer to the primary question is "first cagetory", as evidenced by your (faulty) analogy prior. However, the question is not yet settled scientifically, nor is the rest of society yet convinced. Until that happens, answering the second question is going to remain very difficult.

If cities would allow no-holds-bared competition, every city would end up looking as if it were overrun by a herd of rabid gophers. It is simply not feasible to have 20 companies run wires/fibre/what-not all over the place.

You mean like these: 1, 2, 3, or 4? Or these: 5, 6? Darn, I wish I had those links, last week another /.er posted links to city views with a bunch more cables.

A saner idea, which some cities have implemented, is to place a whole network of city-owned conduits (essentially weather-proof empty pipes) which then can be leased for a nominal fee by anyone who wishes to run a fibre or some other wiring through them to a customer. Probably even more efficient would be for a city to run optical fibre to all households and simply lease that fiber to whatever competing businesses the residents wishes to be connected to.

It is better than what we have now. A Broadband Utopia does like you say, run fiber to homes and businesses then leases access. Here's the link to TFA.

Falcon

you might not have been degrading (you kind of are with your last statement), but plenty of postgres, mssql, and oracle users are. i hate going into ##sql on freenode, asking a question about SQL 92 joins and I get kicked because I said I'm using MySQL. WTF does mysql have anything to do with SQL92 syntax?

and here's where you start to get slightly condescending...

When you clean up enough messes left by people who have no business touching a database, it gets fustrating. Especially when things like this are said:

and

Or are those examples only good for Fortune 10(tm) enterprises and not some piddly organization like yours.

i asked you a valid question, how does innodb not maintain referential integrity? you bring up myisam. i didn't mention myisam. i know myisam isn't ACID. i asked you how innodb isn't. and as for error reporting, http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/error-handling.html. so again, how does innodb not take referential integrity and error reporting seriously?

by the way, when you say

piddly organizations like yours

, are you referring to companies like google, yahoo, or alcatel-lucent? need i really go on?

so even though you say you aren't being condescending, you still maintained to act like an elitist pretentious ass. congratulations. thats exactly the type of attitude us mysql users are fed up with from you non-mysql users.

and yes, i agree with you that mysql's not null default data is complete bullshit, but that was never part of your original argument

Have you read Dyson's paper on global warming?

It's essentially a description of how we could grow plants to take CO2 out of the air. He advocates a carbon tax to pay for this. He estimated that around 2000 the problem with CO2 may or may not be acute, and the problem may not be solved so easily. This was in 1977. His estimates and descriptions are very simple, but he admits that. On the other hand, he provides a very workable solution: tax CO2 production and then use the money to sequester the carbon. He's not some romantic scientific "heretic," he was an early believer in global warming, an early believer that it was a problem and an early believer that economics could be used to help solve it.

It's really too bad more people didn't listen to him back then.

As you point out, his problem is with the panic over global warming (he may have a point), but he's allowing himself to be used a poster-boy for the "global warming doesn't exist" crowd. When Dyson says to simply tax CO2 and use the money to capture it and you're solved the problem, he means it. He means it exactly when he says global warming is a political problem, he thinks the science is done. However, that is all he expects is necessary to say to solve it.

That there should be any more debate or that some politician would not take his advice is unreasonable (this mindset is common in physics, we often don't understand why people don't take our advice, and his advice is obviously scientifically good). The political debate is so distasteful to him that he's separating himself from any scientists who are engaging in politics. That Al Gore is trying to get people to agree to his solution doesn't matter. That a politician is acting like a scientist and gaining popularity from that act is a more important problem to him. This is a mistake of an older (more naive/less cynical) generation of scientist.

Do you really, honestly believe that there aren't people out there who would love to ban pornography, and that the cultural attitudes toward sex which enable them don't also support this sort of oppressive garbage?

Obviously it's too soon to apply the "permanent" label to anything just yet. On the other hand, I'm not sure how much "long-term" confidence I'd put in the recent gains on the Dow Jones either... We're in uncharted territory here.

Anyway, if you thought the Matt Taibi piece was "radical" then you'll love Jim Kunstler's blog...

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/

Enjoy, ;-)

--jrd

Sorry, of course the US would never subsidise alternative energy sources. It's only evil socialist Europe that does that.

These guys make forecasts based on new projects coming on-line as well as past behavior and geopolitical concerns. According to them, oil production peaked in 2008. The former peak was 2005 but due to the energy crisis, oil producers manage to squeeze a little bit more production out. Based on the number of new projects coming on-line and their projected size, they won't balance out known rates of depletion of existing fields for the foreseeable future. We're in a lull right now in the energy market because the economy is ruined (which probably was helped by high oil prices), but energy prices will come back up.

Incidentally, what we're seeing now is very similar to what happened with the price of the last portable fuel we used before petroleum oil: whale oil (which is renewable if harvested in low enough quantities). There were massive oscillations in price that started just after the production of whale oil production peaked in 1845 when the whales started being hunted faster than they could reproduce. The great-grand-parent is totally wrong about the peak being in the future, it's here now and we all have to deal with that. The real question now is how long production can be sustained at this level and how soon will it decline?

By not trying to move onto new energy sources, Shell is resigning itself to becoming a two-bit company. You'd think they would have learned their lesson in 2004 when they had to downgrade their reserve estimates, but I guess not. I wouldn't buy stock in them.

Well then, let me make your day!

Update on red-light camera controversy in Texas, in which some claim red light camera operators must be licensed as private investigators: The Texas Pivate Security Bureau has issued a legal opinion in favor of traffic camera operators. --Ben

A principle of the Information Age: Government is wise to organize itself and its records so it can swiftly and efficiently respond to freedom-of-information-act requests. Resistance to such requests is wasteful and makes government look out-of-touch. --Ben

Here's one way that has been suggested:
http://bztv.typepad.com/newsviews/files/ST2004Reboot.pdf

A memory card adapter can easily be made from an Xbox controller pigtail and a USB extension cable

Google how to make an xbox memory card adapter found this, but a lot of people can't be bothered to learn to solder.

However, there are forums where you can find someone to help you (or do it for you for a fee) all over the country.

I tried xbox soft-mod service indiana on Google but didn't see anything relevant. What keywords should I have tried instead?

All the answers are out there, an intelligent person could spend two or three minutes and get them all.

One problem is that some of the resources about soft-modding are outdated (e.g. Version 1.6 Warning). Some people who are otherwise intelligent don't have the specific knowledge about how to tell if a given tutorial is up-to-date or out-of-date. For instance, the first result from Google xbox soft-mod is from May 16, 2004. What kind of query would one use to ask "Has anything about Xbox soft-modding changed since May 2004"? Or would that be more of a "sign up on a forum" thing?

I suggested "Git for government" to a UK MP recently.

I don't understand how it would even happen. Surely most landlords charge at LEAST enough rent to cover their payments on the property, don't they?

Price-to-rent ratio is a housing market statistic that is kept regularly, and that can be used to address your question.

Look at the chart in this blog entry. Basically, over the past few years, we had a real estate bubble that sent house prices very far up, without a proportional increase in rents. So yes, many properties bought over the past few years are being rented below the cost of the mortgage and other expenses.

Many companies aren't interested in any experience you weren't paid for - they're looking for professional experience.

Besides, once you have more than 10 years experience a few months more is just in the noise.

Two responses:

1. from the above poster:

"In the end, I got top-notch job--which I wouldn't have been able to get if I'd shown up to the interview and been unable to answer engineering-questions due to having not done any engineering for 3+ months. Being able to show my prospective employer which projects were using my code (and show the code) was a definite plus, too--I'm certain that it helped me win-out over the other candidates."

Skillsets are perishable. A shark smothers when it stops swimming. You don't want to be stale for a tough interview.

2. That's why you do something both to a professional standard, and that is impressive. Set a high standard for yourself, pick a difficult problem, and solve it. If it's impressive it's impressive, whether you got paid to do it or not. That's what I'm actually doing now, with boogiepants.

> How about stimulating jobs that actually produce something that others might want?

Fool! You've got it all wrong! I refer you to Iowahawk's Memo to America's Irresponsible Tea Party Whiners: STFU. A sample:

The most ludicrous aspect of these protesters is their utter lack of understanding that the mortgage bailout benefits everyone - even them. Let me explain to these unpatriotic whiners how the economy works: The money that government is now wisely investing in our mortgage system will free up billions of extra dollars in spending by Americans like me, which will directly create jobs. For you economic illiterates, this is what experts call the "multiplier effect."

For example, now that my mortgage worries are over, I was able to afford the down payment on a sweet new jet ski, directly creating jobs at Coralville Kawasaki. I also purchased a few items from my friend and local small business entrepreneur Randy Hansgard. Randy used that money to make high tech capital improvements in his business, like new grow-lights and an Ohaus 3-beam electronic scale. After I wrecked the jet ski, this created jobs at the Coralville Kawasaki service department. I also splurged by sending Linda a thoughtful Jenny Craig gift certificate with my partial January mortgage payment, because she's really been packing on the pounds lately.

See how it works? Now, go pay more taxes!

Wil Wheaton has evaluated the Author Guild's claim and found it stupid. Other wise authors concur.

The Authors Guild acts more like you'd expect from a Book Publishers Guild, though I'm sure a large number of authors are on their side on this.

"I wonder how the authors -- who are supposed to be served by the Authors Guild -- feel about it."

John Scalzi
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/02/11/hello/

Cory Doctorow
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/25/authors-guild-vs-rea.html

Neil Gaiman
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/02/quick-argument-summary.html

Wil Wheaton
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/02/wil-wheaton-vs-text-2-speech.html

Similar issues apply in state government. On account of Open Records Acts, state governments are wise to insist that employees (including governors) route all business e-mail through a central e-mail archive and to encourage employees to take all personal e-mail to personal accounts. --Ben

The only way left to continue the desired cycle and free up credit would be to take resources from the rich, and give it to folks who would actually spend those resources in the process of just living day to day, which would open up the credit markets again, increase demand for products, and so on.

Interesting post Ryan. However, I disagree about the need to take resources from the rich or perhaps I look at it from a different perspective. The rich can keep what they have but the working class who are creating the wealth that flows predominantly into the pockets of a few need to have a more equitable portion of the wealth they help generate.

By just about any economic measure the majority of the citizens in the United States have experienced a gradual decline in their share of the wealth generated by this country. This has resulted in a decrease in disposable household income which I believe individuals have attempted to make up for by utilizing credit.

Sadly people have not been paying attention to their falling portion of the national wealth and were likely lulled into a false sense of security by the housing bubble. Unfortunately now that the bubble has burst the average citizen is getting two strikes for the outrageous household debt and the falling participation in the GDP of the nation. In some cases people get a third strike by losing their job.

The world is different today compared to the past (compared to even just a year ago). The constant march of technology makes it possible for a smaller work force to do virtually the same job as a larger workforce. As white collar employees are handed pink slips, an employer like a bank or a brokerage may be prudent to generously retain their e-mail records. The records are a valuable asset to the employer, relating to intellectual property, project management, customer relationships and more. --Ben http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2008/10/retain-e-mail-of-former-employees.html

According to this blog and many other sources, the lawyers in question were Dan Malone and Jacob Tiedt, who do indeed work at Jones Day according to their own web site. It's not clear to me what, exactly the issue is there. The names involved in sales of a property are ordinarily recorded as public information (unless it's done through an agent or something). The information about these gentlemen's employment is right on their employer's web site. Is Jones Day claiming that putting this information together is illegal?

The blog cites another article in a law journal about supposed concerns about privacy. Fair enough. But if that's the case then these guys have probably gone out of their way to keep all personal information private.

Wait, what's this? Jacob Tiedt is a pretty distinctive name. There can't be too many of those in Chicago. And, wow, that's strange. Why the heck does the guy's name appear all over the place in a Google search that simply uses "Jacob Tiedt" and "Chicago"? Heck, one of the web pages registers his political donations which ALSO indicates that his employer/occupation is "Jones Day/Attorney" and gives his ZIP code. Lexis Nexis gives all sorts of details too, and (gasp) links directly to the jonesday.com web site. Horrors. And, strange, apparently he doesn't have an unlisted number, because his name is easy to find in the various on-line white pages. It's almost as if he hasn't made the slightest effort to remain incognito.

It looks like Jones Day is going to spend a lot of time in litigation if they want to expunge the web of any links to Jones Day and these guy's personal information, and half of the web pages are as a result of their initial attempts with Blockshopper. Hello? Streisand effect?

The apparent remedy in the settlement was to prohibit links like this: Daniel P. Malone Jr., while links like this: www.jonesday.com/dpmalone are acceptable. Huh? I don't get it.

What a farce.

2008 was one of the coldest years on record. When are these dipshits going to admit that global warming doesn't work the way they say it does

Yeah, nice try...

"If we wanted to travel to Alpha Centauri (the nearest star system to the Earth) when should we start the project?"

Located a mere 24 trillion miles from downtown Manhattan, Proxima Centauri, the dimmest orb in the Alpha Centauri star system, is actually the nearest star to the Earth. It takes light, which travels at 186,200 miles per second, 4.22 years to make the trip.

Now, the Voyager spacecraft is generally considered to be the fastest man-made object traveling in space. It is heading out into interstellar space at a blistering, 38,000 miles per hour.

So, if it was pointed at Proxima Centauri (which it is not) it would take Voyager approximately 73,000 years to get there.

Let's think about project management for a moment. Most of the technology we need for this journey does not yet exist. My rocket scientist friends estimate that it will take mankind approximately 1,000 years to build the ship. Inside that 1,000 year time-frame, let's assume that technological advances allow us to travel four times faster than Voyager's top speed. If we start today, we could reasonably expect to arrive at Proxima Centauri in about 20,000 years.

However, if we wait 10,000 years to start the project, technological advances might allow us a four-fold increase in speed for each 1,000 years we wait which would reduce travel time to about 2,000 years.

Which brings us to the Alpha Centauri paradox. If we start the project today, it will take us approximately 20,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri, but if we wait 10,000 years to start the project, the whole trip will take about 12,000 years.

Yes, in the race to the nearest star, waiting 10,000 years to start will get you there 8,000 years ahead of the people who start building technology today. Would you wait?

The problem that caused this crisis was not loans to the poor! Jesus christ, how many times do I have to read this bullshit argument. The problem was the unaccountable "free market" repackaging and trading of those loans, which created a bubble, which popped. People were not getting free loans because of incentives to help the poor. They were getting free loans because the loaner could instantly resell the mortgage at a profit, because there was a bubble and there was wall street greed.

Go do some reading, genius. Better yet, talk to a reputable economist or anyone who worked in banking for the last 3 years, and they'll explain it to you.

Or turn off your brain and blame poor people and liberals. Dumbass.

Well at least they got rid of the $246Million gift to hollywood. (no thanks to you kennedy/kerry!)

Still a ways to go though.

And yet everyone who lives there has adequate healthcare and the same standard of living without massive national debt.

Code words for everyone has mediocre healthcare and a mediocre standard of living along with massive national debt (and India)!

As opposed to the US where the wealthy get excellent healthcare, the people who don't need health care have access to mediocre healthcare, and the poor and those who actually require healthcare have access to zero healthcare.

I'll take an even mediocre over a skewed "excellent" only for the top 1%

And yet everyone who lives there has adequate healthcare and the same standard of living without massive national debt.

Code words for everyone has mediocre healthcare and a mediocre standard of living along with massive national debt (and India)!

Sounds like you're talking about something like this. I couldn't agree more. But keep in mind, our butts need not be all that collective after all. These days the idea of a few hundred mostly private entities between them getting humans established on the moon and with a diverse range of launch capabilities from the earth looks more practical all the time.

Yes, that's true. The gov't has a legitimate interest to maintain communications with the populace. After all, how else will they make sure you are informed about when and where to report for assignment to a FEMA Concentration Camp?

You are going to be shocked, SHOCKED at how many people bitch and moan about this, thinking that it didn't apply to them. It's one thing to read a message and not understand it, and ignore it from then on thinking it doesn't apply to you; it's another thing entirely to break part of what they use (go B&W) so they see it does apply to them. Many people fore go medical treatment thinking it isn't as bad as it really is (lump in breast) and when they finally are talked into seeing a doctor it has metastasized into a terminal cancer.
 
The other half probably should be institutionalized, but hey, right now Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi are pulling most of their weight so they can stay where they are for now.

I am not in public relations, but have had much experience with it. I think your post is a diversion from the issue at hand, possibly (sub consciously?) made to convince yourself (and possibly others) you voted for the guy you thought you were voting for. Whether or not that is the case still remains to be seen.

Let me explain why it remains to be seen by addressing your list.

1. Halted the questionable legal proceedings against people held at Guantanamo Bay

What has done besides say "time-out!"? A time-out is not a change in policy, rules, or SOP.

2. Ordered the shutdown of the prison at Guantamo Bay

He has ordered the shut down of one facility whose name is synonymous with torture and which is a public relations nightmare. What real change is that (other than perception) if the same thing occurs at another prison somewhere else?

3. Ordered the shutdown of CIA "black sites"

You're kidding right? Do you really think the CIA will not be able to use other countries/organizations facilities for the same purposes? Again - its a public image thing more than anything else. To add to that, the order could also allow any president (current or future) to reinstate the C.I.A.'s detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order. Yay for time-outs and public relations!

4. Ordered the CIA to stick to the Army Field Manual for interrogation purposes (read: no more torture)

For the most part - he has still reserved the possibility for "certain" individuals/targets. And again is subject to any current or future presidents mood.

5. Overturned Bush's order to limit release of presidential records and FOIA documentation

First of all, a DC district court judge had already partially done so (pending appeals, of course). Secondly, until and unless Congress passes a bill regarding the issue, any current or future president may simply undo this with another stroke of the pen. (summary: another "time-out!"/public image change only)

6. Began diplomatic overtures to Iran

Ok, whatever the hell that means. Looks and sounds good though!

7. Began talking to Israel, Palestine, Egypt, etc, to hasten resolution of the Israel/Palestine violence

Ok, whatever the hell that means. Looks and sounds good though!

8. Rescinded the Mexico City "gag rule" on government aid to agencies that provide information on abortion

I thought change was coming to the U.S.A.? The Mexico City rule affects NGO's promoting and performing abortion services in other countries.

9. Froze white house salaries at existing levels

So far as I can tell this is may be real. Congrats for being conscious of yours and our public image, President Obama!

10. Passed an executive order banning ex-White House personnel from lobbying the White House until after Obama is out of office [/quote]
AFAIK, they can still lobby Congress. And do you think their WH contacts won't come in handy for THAT? And how about former military defense lobbyists? How about former congressmen and congresswomen lobbying congress? It is a degree of separation, to be sure - but it's just a hoop to jump through, not a barrier.

11. Inquired about extending the use of open source software in government

He asked a question, wow, amazing. And since this is slashdot, surely we all care about that more than anything else - right?

Simply put - unless and until Congress passes a bill regarding any of the executive orders in question - the change is in name only for however long the president feels like it.

It seems to me that when someone says "change has come to America" - they only mean a change in public image - not policy or substance.

Personally, I'm still waiting on real change and not just a change in perception.

Crimes like peaceful protesting, you mean?

First of all, one's "peaceful" (such as rock-throwing so common among Arab youth) is another's "violent" (each rock is, actually, a deadly weapon — especially, when thrown with a sling). Or potentially violent. But violence during a protest is a simple matter for the local police.

Where FBI can be more justifiably involved, are cases of serious (even if non-violent) disruptions, such as when protesters chain themselves to the rail-tracks to stall transportation of nuclear waste. Or damaging military equipment? Preventing such sabotage before it happens and punishing the conspirators (and would-be saboteurs) is a perfectly legitimate job. Another is protecting the military bases — both from mere disruptions and from actual threats.

Who can be sure, whether the mouth-foaming youth is "peaceful" or preparing to bomb the recreation hall? If there are credible suspicions towards the latter (and public expressions of sympathy with an enemy: "Al Qaeda has won! Kill the pigs!" — though not illegal, are one of the tell-tale signs), then an investigation is warranted, however peaceful the suspects have been so far.

Agreed, there's been a lack of good comedy lately and we all need something to laugh at.

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Batman! Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-a...

"...the 30...the 20...the 10...And, he fumbles! The shirts recover the ball and it's down on the 8 yard line!"

Zed: Bring out the Gimp.
Maynard: Gimp's sleeping.
Zed: Well, I guess you're gonna have to go wake him up now, won't you?

Mass re-issuance of cards may not be the best response. In the TJX experience, the cost of re-issuing cards far exceeded the actual risk. Alternatives to re-issuance include tighter monitoring of and restrictions on affected card accounts. --Ben

sometimes that's not enough. for instance:

• when attackers use cold boot attacks
• when attackers use "rubber-hose cryptanalysis" to coerce an authorized individual to give up the encryption key. (deniable encryption is a possible countermeasure, depending on the intelligence the attacker is in possession of)
• when the attacker is law-enforcement in a country where the law requires individuals to divulge their encryption keys. (as with above, deniable encryption is a potential workaround to this, though not a guaranteed countermeasure.)
• when the attacker has a previous backup of a changed disc image or document encrypted using the same key.

the point is, encryption doesn't provide guaranteed protection against all attacks. the encryption algorithm you're using could be broken in the future, or computational power increased to an extent that makes bruteforcing viable, or someone could simply discover your encryption key by other means (trojan, keylogger, bugging your room, wiretapping your phone, looking over your shoulder as you're typing it in, etc.).

the only way to ensure that information you do not want others to know about does not get out is to destroy that information. granted, that's not always an option, but sometimes such action is appropriate.

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster, kid.

Hundreds of studies have proven that they do. Sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "NO, NO, NO" is not a valid argument. Where's the evidences that supports your argument? It's all about the truthiness, right?

Site please, because I call BS on all of those studies. The fact remains that (over all) states with the lowest taxes do better than states with higher taxes.

For starters, here is some sites with tax data.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/08/ten-highest-and.html

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Taxes/Advice/TheBestAndWorstStatesForTaxes.aspx?page=2

http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/taxesbystate2005/

Fridges as we know them are pretty sad contraptions with no shortage of room for improvement. They put a whopping big heat source under the chamber they're trying to keep cool. They use room air from the hottest part of the house, even though in most homes that room is a foot or two away from outside air that is much cooler, if not actually even cooler than the fridge interior should be. In general, they're an agglomeration of kluges and marketroid idiocies. So yeah, this could be a key part of a rethinking of what a fridge is and how it works that could eventually cut power usage by as much as eighty to ninety percent. The same could be said of quite a lot of appliances and HVAC components. Hell, done right, we now know that comfortable homes can be built that require no conventional heating or cooling systems at all.

Kinda makes you wonder why we're supposed to need this "smart grid" for all this massive increased demand we supposedly have no way to avoid, doesn't it?

There are no mainstream free-market Austrian economists anymore

I don't know what you mean by this, but every economist still reads Mises and Hayek, and I haven't seen someone refute the Socialist Calculation problem identified by Hayek. There are minor differences between Monetarists and Austrians (and the more honest of both sides agree that inflation is a monetary issue but that can also inter-react with distortionary over-investment in sectors).

The Austrians are actually claiming that the housing bubble during a time of otherwise low inflation is proof of the Austrian Business Cycle versus Monetarist/Chicago business cycle models.

Here are six Austrian economists and also the Review of Austrian Economics.

(Un?)fortunately, Congress has to allocate the funds for the presidential war powers ("police actions"), so Congress is equally to blame for the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is quite true.

Now, the bailouts? You can blame Congress for creating the mess in the first place, where they REQUIRED banks to provide guaranteed mortgages to lazy sloths and illegals. I do know some hard-working people who did benefit from no-doc mortgages, who have worked hard to keep up and have not missed a single payment, but I see more realty "for sale" signs than I ever have in my life. In my neighborhood I'd say between 1/3 and 1/2 of of the homes are up for sale. Were they foreclosures, or in danger of entering foreclosure? I have no idea; I'm not going to knock on my neighbors and put more stress on them by canvassing the neighborhood with an informal survey. The point is, Congress (mostly our parents' generation) required banks to make those loans, and now we (our generation) and our children have to clean up the mess --- unless we're a third-world nation by then.

This is simply nonsense.

Well, I hope they've got the Z-man's new address in Paradise.

The Zarkman was not impressed with the quality of recruits and supporters garnered through the interwebs. . .

I have at least a partial response to that. Open source, shared protocol transit systems.

The internet is, by some standards, an excellent example of what you're saying can't be done and the reason that it works is that the shared protocols are adhered to.

Keep in mind that our current road systems are, literally from the ground up, products of over a hundred years of mass organization thinking. Everything about how they're built, from signage to surface composition, to determination and enforcement of traffic regulations, is an outgrowth of how we handle vehicular rights of way. And then remember that all of this has been subject to vast bribery and subversion by car companies, oil companies, and the like. As such, not much of it would qualify as good engineering. And trust me, I've spent plenty of hours of my life being ranted at by engineers and managers at various DOTs bemoaning this in great detail.

Anyway, go, read the blog post, and think about open standards and shared protocols. Then think about implementation of transparency of operations, another thing that organizational procedures have been advancing for at great speed. This kind of thing can be done. And we're getting better at it all the time.

The world is different today compared to the past (compared to even just a year ago). The constant march of technology makes it possible for a smaller work force to do virtually the same job as a larger workforce. As white collar employees are handed pink slips, an employer like a Microsoft, a bank or a brokerage may be prudent to generously retain their e-mail records. The records are a valuable asset to the employer, relating to intellectual property, project management, customer relationships and more. --Ben

Try reading The Long Emergency or Kunstler's blog. While he's a little doom and gloom, the basic fact that we aren't living sustainably, and when the oil gets more scarce or environment starts getting all up in it, there's going to be a lag before any major energy change or sustainability movement is going to kick in - and it is likely going to require a significant reduction of the human population.

So, make sure you have some basic tools on hand and have done what you can to prepare. The next few decades are going to be interesting.