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I think this is basic enough for you.

"Blood libel" makes perfect sense? I never heard the phrase before yesterday, and I couldn't make any sense of what it could mean when I read it.

I had to look it up, and the most generic definition I found was from http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Blood_libel

Blood libel - Definition

Blood libels are allegations that a particular group kills people as a form of human sacrifice, and uses their blood in various rituals. The alleged victims are often children.

I really can't fathom how she came up with that phrase.

It is a fact that Palin put out a map with crosshairs over Gifford's district. It is a fact that Giffords spoke publicly about where that could lead.

Palin brought gunsights to the fight. Now she's facing criticism. If she can't take it, she shouldn't start it.

• vandals could not flood the distributed webserver with bogus data.
• cloud-webserver would be available as a storage media, files would be stored on (almost) 'randomly chosen' users computers
• Because the distributed fileserver would fetch the files using an encrypted onion-router like structure privacy of users would be improved
• Storing the files in encrypted form would allow even companies to use that as data distribution, storage server.

So, how could that used as a prior art, well lets assume lets say in 10 years time a company X would start patent trolling companies who use that kind of distributed storage. And if that patent was really a problem then EFFI of some other instance could challenge that patent and request prior art to that patent... and there is a high probability I would also see that request. And I would check my submit mini-prior art to the one needing it.

I believe these kinds of submarine-prior- art patent-busters could be very effective against submarine- patent trolls. If this type of action was popular among independent coders, it would take away much of the problem with stupid software patent. Companies would not dare to start costly process of suing everybody for something obvious, as there would be a BIG probability that someone in the world might just show up and invalidate the whole patent in the middle of an expensive legal process.

For me it was easy to cast that technology to public domain, as I have no use for it self and I'd like that being used. Ok, it is likely that the writing of that patent-buster was 15 minutes of wasted time, but there is also a small chance it wasn't. I consider that being a small service to the community.

The claims seem to revolve around handling certain parts of video encoding in a GPU vs certain parts in the CPU but the site is slashdotted so I can't review it at the moment.

All that said, if I were looking for prior art, I would look at SGI patents for SGI's Indigo IMPACT and/or IMPACT Compression board hardware (e.g. see http://www.wordiq.com/definition/SGI_Indigo2) and even better, the slightly later "O2" workstation graphics they implemented in 1997 (see http://www.wordiq.com/definition/SGI_O2 ). The IMPACT graphics video handling was done all in hardware off the CPU as far as I know, but the O2 had a unified memory architecture and integrated graphics in such a way that some video texture operations were handled on the graphics chipset (the MJPEG compression?) and some in the CPU (texture storage in general purpose RAM). Whether this split of CPU/GPU operations matches the claims MS is patenting, I don't know and would welcome informed comment.

(More broadly, I would add that I thought PCs were doing video decoding on the GPU as far back as Nvidia's Riva TNT if not the slightly earlier Riva 128 (1998). Don't know any implementation specifics tho.)

    --LP

The claims seem to revolve around handling certain parts of video encoding in a GPU vs certain parts in the CPU but the site is slashdotted so I can't review it at the moment.

All that said, if I were looking for prior art, I would look at SGI patents for SGI's Indigo IMPACT and/or IMPACT Compression board hardware (e.g. see http://www.wordiq.com/definition/SGI_Indigo2) and even better, the slightly later "O2" workstation graphics they implemented in 1997 (see http://www.wordiq.com/definition/SGI_O2 ). The IMPACT graphics video handling was done all in hardware off the CPU as far as I know, but the O2 had a unified memory architecture and integrated graphics in such a way that some video texture operations were handled on the graphics chipset (the MJPEG compression?) and some in the CPU (texture storage in general purpose RAM). Whether this split of CPU/GPU operations matches the claims MS is patenting, I don't know and would welcome informed comment.

(More broadly, I would add that I thought PCs were doing video decoding on the GPU as far back as Nvidia's Riva TNT if not the slightly earlier Riva 128 (1998). Don't know any implementation specifics tho.)

    --LP

I said it before Intel did it, jackass. I'm not a fanboy, BTW. I'll buy Intel when it makes sense. I just prefer AMD after about two decades of experience buying products of both companies.

The 486 had a DRAM controller on its die? I'm going to have to ask for a citation. I think you're thinking of either the on-die L1 cache or the MMU (memory management unit), neither of which is a system main memory controller. Here's a citation to the counter: List of Intel Chipsets at Wikipedia. See how the chipset determines the memory specs up until the Core i Series, including the 80486? Here's another: List of Intel Chipsets at World IQ. Here's another: Intel CPU and Chipset History at Overclock 3D courtesy of a forum post there by "PV5150".

An MMU has nothing to do with controlling the actual SIPPs, SIMMs, or DIMMs. It's a multiprocessing ("multiprocessing" doesn't mean "multi-core") feature that allows the processor to enforce memory address range protection so that program A doesn't stomp on program B's memory range. That's a separate concern from getting data into and out of the processor from main memory.

Why don't you go get a copy of something like Upgrading and Repairing PCs and inform yourself? Here's the ISBN.nu link for the 18th edition in case you're a bargain shopper: 18th edition. I have the fifth edition myself. I might get an updated version for the handy reference tables in the back featuring things like POST codes and error codes for SCSI controllers.

BTW, have you ever actually built a PC older than, say, a Pentium 4? Or owned one?

A kevlar blanket, 3/4" - 1" thick, approximately 500 square feet in size bonded to a flexible chobam matrix mixed with a thick viscous gel.
This "fly paper" is then mounted on a cermet frame that has bolting lugs to attach other frames to increase the square foot area.
All on a sesame seed bun.
Any further discussion, Show Me The Money!

The white/black/grey lists are held in the EIR (Equipment Identity Register), which may or may not exist at all (it's optional, some providers don't have one) and is sometimes integrated within the HLR

This is an explanation (a bit dated, but still) of how to decode manufacturer code, country code, approval code etc from the IMEI: http://www.cellular.co.za/ieminumbers.htm

More info (just relevant stuff which came up googling "imei hlr eir"):
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/wireless/TCH_WIR/612218-35166861
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/wireless/TCH_WIR/608687-35166861
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/HLR#EIR

Brief description of the (global?) IMEI DB at the gsmworld site: http://www.gsmworld.com/our-work/programmes-and-initiatives/fraud-and-security/imei_database.htm

The latter is not what I disagreed with. Yes, there is no room for the NX bit in the plain 32bit page tables, however that does *not* mean that PAE is an absolute requirement for NX support.

http://linuxgazette.net/107/pramode.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_bit
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/NX_bit

Sure but's been backronymed so many times I tend to think of it as an acronym now. The best part is depending on mood and how coding is
going there are a plethora of acronyms to choose from!

Perl - A high level scripting language common on Unix-like systems, with the common backronym of "Practical Extraction and Report Language", but jokingly referred to as the "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister". Both expansions appear on the man page. More recently, "Parse Every Random Line", in honor of the extensions proposed for Perl 6. Another less colorful one is "Pathetic Excuse for a Real Language"

from: wordIQ.

WotC already patented CCGs. You (and everybody else) lose!
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5662332.html

See also:
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Trading_card_game #Patent

In the second half of the twentieth century, frustration with English's complexity led some to try and standardize on Esperanto as a substitution for English. (http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Esperanto) However, as most people ignored Esperanto, maybe it's time to take another look at improving English.

We have ISO, ANSI, and bazillion other standards organizations covering everything from the definition of a gram to the grading of meats and vegetables. But there is no standards organization (to the best of my knowledge) for the standardization and improvement of the English language.

If there was, there would be an organization to negotiate which words could be migrated to more phonetically-based spellings.

Instead what we have are many publications (mostly dictionaries, encyclopedias, and style manuals) that record the language as it is and not as it could be.

Imagine Linux without Linus or Java without Sun. (Sorry... couldn't ...resist... the... urge. Ignore the previous sentence.)

What would be needed would be the agreement of existing major publications and publishers to use new standards as they arose. Otherwise, the proposed changes will never happen and the language will continue to spiral in many directions.

As it is, the style manuals do little more than to get agreement as to whether new words like Web and Internet should or should not be capitalized. (Ho Hum.)

SOoo....... who wants to found the E.I.E.I.O? (English Improvement Eventually International Organization)

(I'm only partially kidding.)

1. I'm sure you're speaking figuratively, but for those who don't know, the Polish Cavalry didn't declare war, they were defending their country against invasion. "Going up against" might have been a better phrase.

2. Cavalry wasn't in fact obsolete in 1939 as is often made out. In fact, if you watch the newsreels of German troops entering Czechoslovakia in 1938 many are on horseback, with horse-drawn carts. The Polish cavalry of the time was similar, the units fought as dragoons, using the horses for transport (which was actually advantageous, as many of the roads in all of Eastern Europe were just unsurfaced mud tracks at the time, and vehicles would often get bogged down) and dismounting for battle. They used rifles, machine-guns and horse-drawn artillery. In fact the Polish cavalry had a particularly effective anti-tank gun.

3. The Panzers actually suffered considerable losses in the '39 campaign, the tanks were not the Tigers or Panthers of later years, but light tanks, and in the woods and fields of Poland often suffered at the hands of infantry and cavalry antitank weapons.

You might like to have a look at (for example, just a quick trawl through Google) this page or this one or this one or this one.

Somehow, I'm guessing you don't really mean that.

Get your priorities straight. Catastrophic asteroid impacts happen only every few tens of millions of years. Smaller asteroids seem to impact earth all the time, but they mostly explode at high altitude, where they don't cause any damage. This is just another case of the media pandering to fear of the unknown. Yes, the probability of an asteroid wiping out civilization as we know it is there, but it is extremely small, judging from earth's history. There are many more likely ways to wipe out civilization, among them:

• nuclear holocaust
• a new plaque (what if AIDS was as contagious as the common cold?)
• a genetically engineered virus
• deliberate misuse of nanotechnology
• destruction of our planetary biosphere beyond its capability to sustain life

It never ceases to amaze me how often folks think such "under the table" activities will go unnoticed.

When I read this story, the first thing that to came to mind was:

HEY MAN, NICE SHOT!!!
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/R._Budd_Dwyer

I get the feeling this will not be the last of this story.

The word itself is also new to Chinese. Actually you are quite right in the sense it's imported to the vast Chinese market. :)

As for Xinhua's report, I don't think they have any authority in this. Journalist from there is not likely to be confidently coin new English words, linguistically or politically, although they tend to give accidental new meaning to existing words and phrases, like all media do. :)

BTW, there are too common Chinese words for astronaut, yuhangyuan and taikongren, both in pinyin form. Yuhangyuan is more a written word while taikongren is gaining popularity over the former.

I don't want people being encouraged to "just vote" without the slightest awareness of who or what they're voting for.

I understand your point. My point is that this is a right, not to be distilled by someone, such as yourself, who believes that this right should be unused if one doesn't have the time or inclination to research the issues as thoroughly as you want them to.

I believe that the more people involved in the voting process, the more informed the voters will be. My understanding is that the knowledge will come from the process.

You advocate gaining knowledge before becoming part of the process. You claim that this makes the elections less useful - whatever you define useful as.

I suppose a bad analogy may be drawn from swimming. I say - jump in the pool and figure it out. You say - don't get near the water until you know what you are doing. Either method will work, but my belief is that people who want to get in the water will learn swimming as well as those who sit out until they have 'learned'.

But then, you probably believe that jurers who know nothing about the law shouldn't be on jury duty, either. Juries should be selected from a 'pool' of professional jurers who have studied to be jurists.

The reality is that no one knows as much about the people and issues as they need to with all the FUD flying around. I contend that it's impossible to know enough to make an informed decision. Most of the voters already vote their heart and conscience, which is no different than your wet t-shirt contest. And yes, it is a big popularity contest. Who has the most popular ideals, record, image, etc? When is the last time you saw a short or female or minority president - especially since the advent of TV?

If you want better leaders, pay attention to your local elections, and ignore the presidential candidates. Your local leaders are tomorrow's presidents.

-Adam

The nautilus has only a peephole for an eye. It is fundamentally just a camera obscura.

NASA hasn't blown the fuck out of that many people, when you get right down to it...Seventeen deaths in over thirty years.

You are of course, as is normal in these discussions, forgetting the people who weren't astronauts but who also died because of their jobs. Look under Ground Staff Fatalities, for the US the total comes to 8 people who also died in space-related industrial accidents, but who didn't get buried in Arlington. You could make an argument that several of these individuals died in generic construction snfaus, but on the other hand, the list doesn't include the people who died of heart attacks from sheer over work and stress during the Apollo crash program.

So far, the only memorial these people have is a small statue stashed in the visitor's center beside JSC, and they only got that after legendary pad leader Guenter Wendt kicked up a fuss. I think that's uncool.

There was even an attempt by republicans to pass allow allowing a friendly country (holland) to be invaded and its soldiers killed to "rescue" any american brought before the international court. A greater insult to the world could not have been delivered as america was at the same time busy to get other countries war criminals before those same courts.

"The album debuted in #1 in sales in 28 countries; however, in the United States it only reached #3. All That You Can't Leave Behind was the third-highest-selling U2 album, with total sales of over 10 million." WordIQ.com

As of three days ago, the new single Vertigo is at the top of four separate charts.

Many artists would love to be so irrelevant.

Not only does it not ablate, but the titanium will melt and scram the reactor long before the reactor itself experiences meltdown.

In other words, this is an extremely safe reactor design. :-)

Not to sound paranoid, but when the reactor overheats and falls off where does it go?

Definition of Scram in this context: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Scram_switch

In this reactor its not even a mechanical devise or procedure that has to be run; if the reactor starts to overheat then the heat melts the tungsten cladding around the fuel rods and the reaction is quenched. That's why it's an extremely safe design. Or something like that, perhaps a real nuclear engineer could elaborate, they didn't seem to lay it out very clearly in the article.

IANANE

"One can argue that this is because all the developers flocked around Linus ( I think Stallman has made this argument from time to time ) but given that world+dog has given up on the whole microkernel thing, it's more likely that the hurd just sucks."

Sez you!

This proves the existence of negative numbers in the same way that (1+i)(1-i) = 2 proves the existence of imaginary numbers. I.e. it does not. Unless you have additive inverses or subtraction a^2-ab+b^2 does not parse.

Additive inverses and subtraction are defined for integers and real numbers, but not for p-adic numbers .

If you'd checked the facts with Cheney's alternate reality shield turned off, you'd seen that Poppy Bush and Cheney were the ones that started the slide by letting NK off the hook and leaving the whole mess for the Chinese to sort out back in November 1991 after having decided to withdraw all US nukes from South Korea in October the same year. This in spite of persistent reports since 1985 that they were up to no good.

Clinton at least got the North to sign the treaty and dismantle their plutonium program by threatening to bomb their Pu reactor off the peninsula and together with the South Korean government made the North go with a more easily controlled uranium-based power generation program, delaying their bomb program by ten years. There were no indications at the time that they were breaking the deal until 2002 and last year when they openly admitted it. George W. Bush then took strong, resolute and decisive action by doing jack shit about it.

Neither Reagan, Bush or Bush has done anything except defer to the Chinese in this matter. Fact is, if it wasn't for Clinton and his credible threat of airstrikes, North Korea could have had plutonium bombs ready to go some time around 1995.

Actually, in French "toilette" has always meant the same thing; it's English where the word toilet shift meaning to refer to a specific bathroom fixture instead of the original meaning it had when we stole it from the French language.

As the WordIQ entry posted with the article states:

At the time of presentation, the SMUD work had not been peer reviewed.

Without peer review, studies like this a easily fabricated or simply mistakes.

Neither party

I'm sorry, you seem to be operating under the mistaken assumption that there are only two parties to pick from. Allow me to share some info with you. For convenience, let's consider only the Presidential election.

There are actually 6 candidates for President who are on enough (I believe) states ballots to have a chance to win the election. Bush and Kerry, obviously, but also:

Mike Badnarik - Libertarian

David Cobb - Green

Ralph Nader - Independent

Mike Peroutka - Constitution

In addition, Roger Calero, the candiate for the Socialist Workers Party, is on the ballots in 14 states.

Finally, there are at least four other candidates who are on the ballots in at least two states:

(from ballot-access.org):

Socialist Party (Walt Brown) is on in Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

Socialist Equality Party (Bill Van Auken) is on in Colorado, Iowa, New Jersey, Minnesota, Washington, and is in court in Ohio.

Prohibition Party (Gene Amondsen) is on in Colorado and Louisiana.

Workers World Party (John Parker) is on in Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.


More details can be found at ballot-access.org

And a list of political parties in the United States is available as well.

seems to be fiscally conservative anymore.

The Libertarian Party is.

Hmm, not really, if I walk in to a restraunt and you're smoking I'm going to walk right up to the manager and say, I don't fancy dying of lung cancer caused by passive smoking, either enforce a no-smoking policy or I'm eating elsewhere.

That's perfect, as long as you're polite about it. You're providing the manager with the information he needs to adapt to the market. (a true Keynesian free market relies on perfect information among other things).

Do make good of your threat and frequent somewhere with a no-smoking area.

In a year to 18 months here in the UK I'll be walking up to said smoker and saying smoking is banned in public places, put it out or I'll stick it up your arse.

I'm a non-smoker, but I really hope that doesn't coma about. You're being pretty optimistic about the speed government works too, since we were promised saner opening hours 4 years ago...

I believe this is something the market can decide, and I believe there are better ways to get people off cigarettes (nearly wrote "fags" there, but anticipated americans misunderstanding me). Prohibition didn't work for alcohol in 1930s USA. It's not working for narcotics anywhere. It won't work for cigarettes.

Line s ? What is this plural of which you speak? Since "Brevity is the soul of wit", truly cool and efficient programmers code in suitably compact languages.

2. ...just like we were going to have intelligent robots by 2001.

We did.

Unless you mean intelligent like R2D2 and C3PO?

• >You deliberately use exclusive or, indicating that what you linked to ought to make things either clear or clearer but not both.

• >You probably should stick with something like "that ought to make things clear, or at least clearer".

  AND

  >Your logic is incorrect

NPR has manipulated laws and its public "competition" to the point where it has a near-monopoly on non-profit radio in the United States. For example, they have consistently sided with commercial broadcasters against allowing low-power (and thus low-cost) FM radio stations. Some college radio stations were driven off the air when NPR successfully lobbied the FCC to kill their licenses soon after it was formed.

Keep in mind that NPR is a medium-sized corporation: it pays salaries to quite a few people, owns infrastructure and facilities, etc. It has about the same set of concerns as any (privately-held) broadcasting corporation, including increasing market share and revenue.

In addition, as you observe, NPR is funded directly by the same large corporations that fund the Democratic and Republican parties. While I'm skeptical that there's explicit tying of donations to content, I'm sure that NPR is careful to keep its overall format fundable.

Just before 4 p.m. on Nov. 10, 1950, St-Alexandre-de-Kamouraska on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River near Quebec City was rocked by an explosion. Townsfolk saw a thick cloud of yellow smoke spiralling up 1,000 m above the middle of the river, which is 20 km wide at that point. Then came the low rumble that shook houses for 40 km around. It was 40 years before officials finally admitted what had happened: a U.S. Air Force plane had accidentally detonated an atomic bomb over Canada.

Fortunately, the weapon's plutonium-uranium core was not present. What exploded so dramatically over the St. Lawrence was a 2,200-kg chemical charge used to detonate the Mark IV bomb, dropped by a U.S. Air Force B-50 bomber that had run into trouble during a flight from Goose Bay, Labrador, to the United States.

November 10, 1950 - A B-50 returning one of several US Mark IV bombs secretly deployed in Canada had engine trouble and jettisoned the weapon at 10,500 feet. The bomb, carrying the depleted uranium tamper but not its plutonium core ("pit"), was set to self-destruct at 2500' and dropped over the St. Lawrence River off Rivière du Loup, Quebec. The explosion shook area residents and scattered nearly 100 pounds (45 kg) of uranium. - WorldIQ List of Notable Nuclear Accidents

Robert Byrd

Seriously, it's the people who have been too lazy when things like the US coup of 2000 can happen without any reaction whatsoever. How about getting off your asses (and drag your neighbor with you) and vote? By the way, calling a two-party election "democratic" is just ridiculous. Look at Norway, where no party has had absolute majority in at least 20 years, and which has been at the top of the UN Human Development Index since 2001!</rant>

And there's even a geopolitical reason for it!!!

Is this Jeff Merkey possibly a brother to Paul Murky of Merky Research, the assistants to the good folks at Car Talk?

Hmmm. 1.5 trillion of the debt is held by the Social Security Trust Fund. If you look at the Debt Site you'll see that over 3 trillion is in by intragovernmental holdings. 4 trillion is held by the Public, of which 1.7 trillion is held by foreign investors.

Want to stop the Ponzi scheme? Stop the greatest one of all time, Social Security.

Diamond has long held a special unattainable allure, not only because of its unparalleled hardness, Youngs modulus, dielectric properties and thermal conductivity (hold a big diamond in your hand and it will feel cold as it draws heat quickly - hence the moniker "ice"), but because of the possibility of making semiconductors from it.

IIRC, it has a really interesting wide band gap, but that two big practical problems exist:

1. growing layers of diamond that are sufficiently defect-free. Last I heard, even the best CVD process seems to put down polycrystalline diamond layers.
2. n doping is difficult to do well for diamond.

If these barriers could be surmounted, diamond devices would become a more widespread and useful technology.

Can't say :)

I had thought it was 60 Minutes, but it was apparently DateLine that fabrictaed a story about exploding General Motors trucks in the 80's. They wanted to do a story on trucks exploding when in collisions - the only problem they had was that they didn't. So they undid the gas caps, poured fuel all over the place, inserted a detonator or two, you get the idea. They lost the court case pretty convincingly when GM sued

Corporations selling product lying to me is bad enough - but I recognize that there's a motive there for them to do so, and why. News organizations shoveling crap for ratings though is another ball of wax. These people should go to jail.

Here's a Wiki text outlining the situation with the 1980's Audi (Audi 5000).

Flamebait? It was both *funny* and true. See definition: spy satellite, and a list of launches, and a list of types

Try googling for "KeyHole satellight".

Consider the job oppurtunities! Develop time-frequency transforms for radar imaging and signal analysis. Become ever more efficient at extracting dispersive scattering features, while detecting and extracting weak signals in noise. Detect and track moving targets in the synthetic aperture radar, then analyze vibration and rotation induced micro-Doppler.

Haven't you heard that security is a "booming" field?
(Note for the further clearless: that was intended as a pun.)

Soldiers abduction 1 - scroll to the October 2000 part.
Soldiers abduction 2

Amunition carrying ambulances etc. [WorldNetDaily]

As for the rockets, the footage is a day old, so I couldn't find a link. Sorry about that.

Unfortunately, due to a loophole in the U.S. Constitution, they can make sure they never have to face the death penalty for treason. See bottom.

So, the U.S. Constitution has a fundamental flaw, it allows a totally corrupt congress to commit treason against it's own country with impunity.

The PSP's UMD has an 11 Mbps transfer rate and the unit has 32MB. It can't take more than about 30 seconds to fill main memory. However, there's no reason you can't load enough to begin doing something (for instance, showing the countdown in a racing game) and stream the rest of it until memory is filled. It will require some clever programming, but I don't want games made by stupid people anyway. I can't imagine that no one is doing this now, anyway.

Hmm, well, I guess I'm willing to support this statement, although I didn't make it.

I don't think the Electoral College is a bad idea per se -- I think that it makes some sense to group people geographically and then have them vote as one, and plenty of people have made arguments, including some interesting mathematical arguments, to demonstrate that the EC increases, rather than decreases, the value of the individual vote.

HOWEVER: What is not at all fair is the formula for distributing electoral college votes. In 2000, Montana had 1 vote for every 300K citizens, & California had only 1 vote for every 600K citizens. Every state gets a minimum of 3 electoral votes, which gives all those gunslingers in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana WAY more than their share -- just as it gives them an outrageously disproportionate influence in the Senate (which I actually consider to be a worse problem). The source for those numbers says:

While largely ignored by Presidential candidates in elections, the smaller states are not as completely irrelevant as they would be otherwise.

This misses the point -- the small states are ignored by the candidates because they ARE NOT SWING STATES. Most are overwhelmingly Republican.

The most surprising thing about American politics right now is that North Dakota and South Dakota have 4 Democratic senators, even though both states vote firmly Republican in the Presidential elections. I don't know what to make of this, other than to suppose that the Rs must be repeatedly nominating wackos for Senator in those states. If the party manages to get its extremists under control, we'll have 4 more R senators, with the result that about a dozen Republican senators will have been elected to represent about 10 million citizens, vs the 88 senators that represent the other 270 million of us.

In any case, since the Constitution isn't going to change anytime soon -- the Republicans would have to be crazy to allow it -- the only real hope for the Democratic party is mass migration. They need to move about 1 million liberal Democrats out of TX, OK, CO, NY and CA into each of ND, SD, WY, MT, ID and UT.

You will note that this is NOT that many people, when all is said and done. If somebody with a lot of money made it their objective, it could be done. Most of the migrants should come from Texas , Oklahoma, and Colorado, where their current residency just serves to increase the number of electors appointed by the Republicans in those states.

there are "Problems with application incompatibilities, poor performance, escalating support costs and an immature Linux ecosystem".

Combe's Web applications needed a database, and the only option available to the company was one from Oracle Corp.

Case also was concerned that his company did not have appropriate in-house Linux expertise.

We have also lowered our TCO [total cost of ownership].

(Another company ... same story) "The decision to go with Linux was a cost-based one," [...] "We had not budgeted the e-commerce system setup in that year's business plan."

"We spent more during the first three months troubleshooting the Linux system than if we had purchased the Windows solution to begin with," [...] "The Linux system could not handle the layers of information needed for internal control of the resort."

System failures and escalating costs had the resort reconsidering its Linux decision [...] "There was a limit [..within the application which..] crashed the whole store."
[...]
Mountain High decided to rebuild the site on Windows [...] If we had not gone with the Windows solution, there is no way we could have processed all the passes.

I am surprised that no metion was made yet of the obvious Richard Daley