In fact, that literally is the scope of their investigation.
That is pretty much the sole reason to counter-spy on 'friendly' spies. I mean, they're not running around blowing up our nuclear power plants or assassinating people.
No, 'friendly' spies are running around collecting influence by doing favors, and creating people in powerful positions beholden to them. That's all they do, have a network of people.
Of course, people seem resistant to make the next logical connection here: Was the fact they happened to have dirt on someone supporting the administration's lawbreaking a coincidence, or did they deliberately get it just in case she decided to stop supporting it?
Yeah, heaven forbid that people have a 'sense of entitlement' about copyright works.
You know, those things we, as society, have specifically granted certain people the ability to stifle free speech over, in return for increased output.
I guess it's just crazy we'd be upset that we granted someone the ability to stop us from making copies in return for them giving us interesting stories....and then they not actually selling the stories to us at any price. Crazy us.
What's really absurd is that business sit there and argue with straight face that 'free trade' means that they should be able to hire people living in slums on the other side of the world at 10 cents an hour, in places with almost no legal protections for workers.
But for some reason they should be able to regionally lock everything, and that people living in America shouldn't be able to purchase things at those prices.
Laws stopping them from doing business with other countries are somehow restraining trade, but laws that exist that stop humans from doing business with people reselling those products in other countries (Like the DMCA making subverting regional locking illegal) are just and fair.
Can't have it both ways. Corporations were perfectly happy with the world being flat when that meant they could pay people 10 cents an hour and then sell half the DVDs they pressed for 50 cents there and 20 dollars here, but get all pissy the second we go over there and buy the 50 cent DVDs over there.
We're way past the point where we can affect change in copyright law, as evidenced by the fact that laws are passed that have no possible public benefit at all.
Like retroactive copyright extension. The second that was passed, the second that things produced decades ago, and granted copyright for a specific time, had their copyright extended, copyright was demonstratably broken, and operating entirely outside the bounds of the public opinion.
And I'm sorry, I can do whatever the fuck I want with anything produced by the companies that supported that. They have violated the agreement they have with society, by purchasing congresspeople, making laws that serve no public benefit at all.
Yes, all content in SSL pages is encrypted, because otherwise MitM attacks are easy..an attacker simply replaces part of the loaded unencrypted content with Javascript to pass them a copy of the page and all submitted data.
This is why web browsers warn about unencrypted content.
Ah, my bad, I should have contrasted that with having a few decent workplaces and using VPN and/or USB sticks to move things between them. And a palmtop/netbook for the portable needs.
Heh, try pulling up Dreamweaver or Photoshop off a USB stick. There is a 'fake a Windows environment' tool that would let you try it (I'm blanking on the name), but there's no way in hell it would actually finish launching in less than an hour.
Amd I'd need to hijack one of their computers anyway, and often their computers are crap.
Likewise, half the time I don't even have internet access, or would just have dialup. It's an interesting fact of selling businesses web sites: Often they don't have internet connectivity, or are using lameass dialup and their ISP email account or hotmail.
No, I walk into meetings with clients with my laptop and my bluetooth-enabled phone for cellular dialup. And my little bluetooth mouse. Expecting them to have anything is a good way to spend 30 minutes screwing around setting stuff up. Sometimes they have an open-wifi network or a obvious open router port I can plug into, but that's it. (Recently my laptop batteries have dropped from four hours to 30 minutes, so I'm finding myself needing to find power outlets...I need to get a new battery.)
And I use it as my normal desktop at other times simply because it's easy to keep one workspace, and the machine is fast enough. (Plus, of course, it is my work computer, and my other computer is not.)
But, yes, people in office buildings should just have desktops, although I'm not a fan of the 'portable workspace'...it's really absurd that businesses can't give their workers a fricking dedicated workspace. I actually think it's absurd they stick them in cubicles.
Still, I find myself surrounded with a lot of people who don't actually seem to use it that way. At best they lug it around as a portable presentation unit and the only reason they take it home is that it might get stolen if they leave it at the office. Compared to having a serious multihead desktop with fast disk and decent amounts of memory, it just seems like a bad compromise for the limited advantage they gain.
A lot of people think of laptops as a status symbol for some unknown reason, when in reality it's a 'less powerful computer you can move around easily and sometimes use without even a table'. And netbook are 'even less powerful computers designed to be held in your lap'.
It is possibly the stupidest status symbol ever, and it is idiotic to have to carry it around so it won't get stolen.
Also, I'm working on getting my laptop multi-headed, via a USB video card. Right now it's my workspace that is the limitation.
Telsa has problems reaching the level of supply to match their demand. That seems like the perfect sort of company to loan money to. They will build another factory somewhere, hire more workers, and make more cars. A win for everyone, except morons who think 'the rich' need to be punished by making them buy gasoline-powered cars, and are too stupid to realize that early adopters pay higher prices than everyone else...that early adopters are, in a sense, ripped off.
Telsa's problems are pretty much the opposite of any of the big three, whose problem is that their cars suck and they spend too much time and energy on stupid stuff. They sell fifty cars each when there's actually only maybe ten different makes of cars people buy, with maybe two different models of each, standard and luxury.
Instead they have entire divisions of 'nameplates', selling mostly identical cars, and think they're clever for reusing the same chassis and engine.
And modestly stupid, as people don't want to 'know' what google updater is doing, they just want to turn it the fuck off.
And it's damn stupid for disclosure, because if you think google is doing something dastardly with google update, they could have just, duh, release source with that part missing.
Not that I'm entirely sure why people would be running Google applications if they didn't trust google not to do bad things to the computer.
I don't like auto-updates, but don't really mind if the application checks for updates. I use filehippo's update checker to do updates, but I'm okay if the program itself does it, although I turn if off whenever I can. I run filehippo's checker once a week.
But I loathe background programs that run all the time that do updates. What the hell? Is this some sort of ego thing?
No, your program is not important enough to have a background task to update it. It's probably not important enough to have a background task at all. You want it to update itself, it can wait until it's running.
Of course, what I'd really like is for Microsoft to get their fucking act together and make it trivial for third-parties to add things that show up during Windows Updates.
The vast majority of gamers are casual gamers and most games run just fine on laptops. That's why "The Sims" franchise is the best selling game of all time.
No, they aren't. The vast majority of game players are casual. 'Gamer' is a specific term referring to people who build high end machines with the intent of getting the most graphic and CPU performance from them in order to play the newest games.
And they always upgrade their computers, when they aren't buying entirely new ones.
I wasn't talking about people buying laptops that can run games. I have a few games on my laptop. NWN1 runs fine on it. Scummvm runs everything fine.
I was talking about the $2000 and up 'gamer laptops', when in the actual universe it would always be better to build a damn gaming computer with handles and then buy a cheap laptop. And, no, gamers do not play on laptop keyboards. They play on fucking custom keyboards with rows of extra buttons macro'd to hotkeys.
If your laptop costs less than $2000, I'm not talking about it in any way, shape, or form. I was talking about the specific 'desktop replacement' laptops designed to run the (almost) newest games. Which are, as I said, damn stupid purchases.
I understand that when you read 'gamer laptops', you thought 'gamer=person who plays computer games' and 'laptop=any laptop', and thought I said 'playing any game on a laptop is stupid'.
No. That's not what I meant by 'gamer', which is a specific self-identified subset of computer owners, and that's not what I meant by 'gamer laptop', which are absurdly expensive laptops designed to be purchased by that subset.
Another thing, and I haven't been able to watch your video yet but I know how it works here, these machines all seem to have huge half inch gaps between the touchscreen and the actual display.
Combine that with parallax from the displays being at different angles to different height people, and the candidates being lined up with no space between each other, and you don't need any damn 'drift' to select the wrong person.
Someone will have to do the actual math, but height differences of three feet from two feet away with a parallax on the other side of a half inch will result in presses being a fair distance off even if the machine is magically perfect.
It's not a mechanical problem, it's a damn design flaw caused by purchasing cheap touch screens that mount on top of displays, instead of ones built in. And at least normal computer touch screens are used by people sitting in chairs...these touch screens are used by people standing anywhere in the voting booth.
Some people need a portable computer. I don't know why you say you don't know why people have them, and then state the explicit reason they do: They need a computer they can easily haul from place to place, and can use to some extent without any accessories except maybe a wireless mouse in their laptop bag.
I, for example, work from home, and my work computer (I'm a web designer) is a Toshiba Satellite laptop, it was about $650, purchased for me by my job about three years ago. It can handle everything I need it to do, up to and including Photoshop. (Now that I've upped the RAM to 2 gig.) It's hooked to my monitor and keyboard and mouse so people don't even realize 'my computer' is a laptop. I've had people ask if they can use my laptop while I'm sitting typing...at my laptop.
So it behaves exactly like a low-end desktop PC, for maybe $200 more...but I can pick it up and carry it into work when I go there. Or take to my hotel room on business trips. Or when visiting clients. Or carry it when visiting the family if some work emergency pops up.
My laptop is actually hooked into a KVM where the other side is my gaming computer, which was actually about the same price as my laptop. But is, of course, a tower.
Both 'portable low-end desktop replacement' and 'ultra-thin carry-anywhere portable web browser' laptops have their places. No, the category of computer that doesn't make any sense is gaming laptops. Just buy an easily luggable case with shock mounts for the hard drives. No one should play fricking modern computer games in their lap or on a laptop display. You just paid a $1000 premium to make your game computer non-upgradable, good thinking there.
I remember when we used to haul CRTs for lan parties and hook up everything there...you guys can haul fricking LCD displays, one of those portable 'cube' cases with handles, and a wireless mouse and keyboard and even a wifi card built in. It's like 20 pounds of equipment and three damn cables to plug in, as opposed to our 60 pounds and miles of wiring.
If you're walking long distances with a laptop, instead of spending money on a lighter laptop, spend money on a backpack to put it in so it doesn't require constant correction of your balance.
You can carry a weight on your back for about ten times as long as you can carry it on one shoulder.
The best people to go for cheap desktop replacements are Toshiba. You can buy reasonable ones for about $500-$600 if you're not going to run games and don't care about graphics performance.
Incidentally, attempting to buy a laptop to run games on is the stupidest waste of money ever. You'll never get one as good as a desktop machine, your battery performance will suck, and you can't upgrade the video card or DVD to blueray or add another hard drive to hold your ISOs or whatever. And who the hell plays games in their lap on that little keyboard? If you're setting it down and plugging in a keyboard and mouse, you don't need a 'laptop'!
Just buy a easily portable case with shock mounts for the hard drive, ya fools. They make them with handholds and everything. Plug in a wireless keyboard and mouse, hook up a flat panel, set it all on a table where you can easily get to the wiring to disconnect. Maybe even use a USB hub as a docking station.
And you've got something that's almost as easy as a laptop to tote to someone's house for a lan party or into your living room to hook up to your TV. Yet cost you $600 for a tricked out machine instead of $3000. And then spend another $500 on a nice laptop to websurf and watch TV in the kitchen or when you're at the library or airport, but isn't capable of playing Call of Duty 4.
No, trying to make the claim that Rush Limbaugh speaks for the whole of the Republican Party is poisoning things. Any neutral observer can see how that's as absurd as trying to say that Michael Moore speaks for all Democrats.
Any neutral observer could have claimed that as of a few months ago. They could have said it was an exaggeration.
They certainly can't claim it now that the head of the RNC had to apologize to him.
But you're still operating in the fantasy universe where the Democrat's and Republican's response to being linked to their fringe is the same, and, as has been pointed out repeatedly, it's not. The Democrat's fringe are a bunch of people the politicians ignore. (Hell, they even ignore people they shouldn't.)
The Republican's fringe is their base. Owned by Rush and Malkin and a bunch of other wackjobs.
How about the "Bush lied, people died!" crowd that make excuses for Clinton's perjury?
Um. The point of that was to contrast Bush's lies with Clinton's. Clinton lied, no one died, he got impeached. Bush lied, people died...
The whole point of that expression is that both presidents lied. One of them got people killed, one of them got impeached.
And is it worth pointing out that quite a lot of people on the left feel that Clinton did something wrong at the time. They just didn't feel it warranted removal from office. (For example, moveon.org was created with the premise that congress should censure the president and...move on.)
It's probably not worth pointing out, because in your imaginary universe everyone on the left was lining up defending the president, instead of just saying 'Hmmm...lying to cover up an affair doesn't really seem like a good reason to remove a president from office.'.(1)
And how about the far left fringe that shouts at the top of their lungs about "civil rights" while simultaneously trying to gut the 2nd amendment?
But, as has been pointed out, the far left has almost no connection to the Democratic politicians. Whereas the far right apparently owns the RNC.
What about all of the Democrats blaming Bush for gutting the regulatory structure while remaining silent on all those regulations that Clinton did away with?
Which Democrats would that be? Because I actually remember Clinton's administration and he was constantly criticized by the left for being too far to the right, fiscally, and removing regulations.
If you're saying he's not criticized now, well, no. That was a decade ago, and it's akin to criticizing the guy who used to drive the car for not getting the oil changed when the guy after him poured gasoline on it and set it on fire.
Incidentally, it takes a hell of lot of nerve for the right to criticize Clinton for being too far to the right fiscally and doing exactly what the right wanted. But is sure is funny watching Republicans pointing to their fiscal deregulation policies, implemented with the help of Democrats, as the problem. Yeah, we sorta already knew that. The fact the Democrats participated isn't going to make us elect Republicans, it's going to make us elect Democrats who are actually on the left fiscally.
Rush isn't "in charge" of the right any more than Keith Olbermann is "in charge" of the left.
Except, of course, politicians on the left feel free to diss Olberman. (And he, meanwhile, has been absolutely critical of the Obama administration the past few weeks, and I have to agree with him.)
I do find the obsession with him to be quite amusing though. I've always found him to be a bit of a jackass myself but I do get a kick out of seeing Liberals enraged to the point of trying to legislate [wikipedia.org] against him.
Meanwhile, conservatives are attempt to require us to applease Odin.
...wait, we can't just link to something that existed
Call me cynical, but it seems to me that if you run your whole campaign on the promise of a "new kind of politics", you should probably refrain from engaging in the old kind of politics that you claimed was poisoning the atmosphere.
So somehow complaining about the hate spewing from the right is, itself, poisoning things?
It's amazing the level that the American people have ingested the rhetoric of the right.
Look, the fundamental rule of the GOP is to stand there and accuse your opponent of doing exactly what you're doing fifty times more. They've done it for decades.
The only way to make them stop is to actually point it out. Not just point out that they are factually incorrect about the left doing that, but then you have to remember it and, when the right changes direction and does exactly the same thing, you have to then point it out to everyone.
I.e, when the far right fringe is okay with imprisoning Americans without charges, but has a hissy fit over voluntary national service organizations, calling them 'reeducation camps', or who think that FEMA laws are a conspiracy to implement martial law, whereas the military actually imprisoning people isn't...someone need to actually point that to the public, so the public can see that those people are fucking loons who have no actual philosophical objections to anything, and are simply 'pro-right' and 'anti-left'.
Which was the original intent of Obama's comments, pointing out how Rush had suddenly started saying 'unamerican things' like wanting the president to fail that he'd been claiming the left was doing for the past eight years.
But then, hilarious, it happened on another level, because he correctly said that Rush spoke for the right, which resulted in some sort of meltdown among the right, which had worked for decades on the convenient idea that Rush would repeat whatever message they wanted, but wasn't 'really' part of the right and they didn't have to explain anything he said, because he was just some guy.
Rush, however, had other ideas, and it turns out he was right about who was in charge.
It isn't 'poisoning the atmosphere' to question who's in charge of the right and what Rush's role is when obviously the right itself doesn't even know. It's a valid question.
You don't need to do that, what you do need to do is make sure they can't get physical access to the secure computer. I.e., can't accidentally or purposefully plug in flash drives or whatever. Same with the network connection. Lock the box in a cabinet, monitor, keyboard, and mouse cables exit from the front, everything else exits inside the walls.(1)
They're extremely unlikely to confuse the two while using them. As someone pointed out, on one you've got a web browser, and on the other you have a control interface. You can't get to the interface on the insecure one, and in the unlikely event they fire up a web browser on the secure one, they aren't getting anywhere. Just make sure they don't put insecure media in the secure one.
I'd actually argue that this would be a perfect situation for thin clients. Don't give people a secure computer. Give them a secure dumb terminal.
1) And while you're at it, use PS/2 mice and keyboards. Because guess what you can do with access to a plugged-in USB keyboard and enough time? Rig a USB port. And plug in a flash drive.
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Unless Brazil has laws against doing that, it's legal in Brazil. Doesn't matter what the US military thinks.
Although, of course, there's no way of knowing that.
In fact, that literally is the scope of their investigation.
That is pretty much the sole reason to counter-spy on 'friendly' spies. I mean, they're not running around blowing up our nuclear power plants or assassinating people.
No, 'friendly' spies are running around collecting influence by doing favors, and creating people in powerful positions beholden to them. That's all they do, have a network of people.
Of course, people seem resistant to make the next logical connection here: Was the fact they happened to have dirt on someone supporting the administration's lawbreaking a coincidence, or did they deliberately get it just in case she decided to stop supporting it?
She just said she'd do her job to help a particular person, in exchange for someone helping her.
Yeah, heaven forbid that people have a 'sense of entitlement' about copyright works.
You know, those things we, as society, have specifically granted certain people the ability to stifle free speech over, in return for increased output.
I guess it's just crazy we'd be upset that we granted someone the ability to stop us from making copies in return for them giving us interesting stories....and then they not actually selling the stories to us at any price. Crazy us.
What's really absurd is that business sit there and argue with straight face that 'free trade' means that they should be able to hire people living in slums on the other side of the world at 10 cents an hour, in places with almost no legal protections for workers.
But for some reason they should be able to regionally lock everything, and that people living in America shouldn't be able to purchase things at those prices.
Laws stopping them from doing business with other countries are somehow restraining trade, but laws that exist that stop humans from doing business with people reselling those products in other countries (Like the DMCA making subverting regional locking illegal) are just and fair.
Can't have it both ways. Corporations were perfectly happy with the world being flat when that meant they could pay people 10 cents an hour and then sell half the DVDs they pressed for 50 cents there and 20 dollars here, but get all pissy the second we go over there and buy the 50 cent DVDs over there.
We're way past the point where we can affect change in copyright law, as evidenced by the fact that laws are passed that have no possible public benefit at all.
Like retroactive copyright extension. The second that was passed, the second that things produced decades ago, and granted copyright for a specific time, had their copyright extended, copyright was demonstratably broken, and operating entirely outside the bounds of the public opinion.
And I'm sorry, I can do whatever the fuck I want with anything produced by the companies that supported that. They have violated the agreement they have with society, by purchasing congresspeople, making laws that serve no public benefit at all.
What if I choose standby in 5 minutes, but turn off hard drives in 15 minutes? Who wins?
Um, both? Standby implies turning the hard drive off too.
It's sorta like a car in that regard.</car analogy>
Yes, all content in SSL pages is encrypted, because otherwise MitM attacks are easy..an attacker simply replaces part of the loaded unencrypted content with Javascript to pass them a copy of the page and all submitted data.
This is why web browsers warn about unencrypted content.
Um, I've never seen a 'license' on SSL certs at all. Where are you people buying these things from?
Yeah, except for that whole 'XP running IE6 or IE7', which is something like 60% of all web browsers.
Actually, strictly speaking, you can run it on a single IP and different ports.
But no one likes that solution.
Ah, my bad, I should have contrasted that with having a few decent workplaces and using VPN and/or USB sticks to move things between them. And a palmtop/netbook for the portable needs.
Heh, try pulling up Dreamweaver or Photoshop off a USB stick. There is a 'fake a Windows environment' tool that would let you try it (I'm blanking on the name), but there's no way in hell it would actually finish launching in less than an hour.
Amd I'd need to hijack one of their computers anyway, and often their computers are crap.
Likewise, half the time I don't even have internet access, or would just have dialup. It's an interesting fact of selling businesses web sites: Often they don't have internet connectivity, or are using lameass dialup and their ISP email account or hotmail.
No, I walk into meetings with clients with my laptop and my bluetooth-enabled phone for cellular dialup. And my little bluetooth mouse. Expecting them to have anything is a good way to spend 30 minutes screwing around setting stuff up. Sometimes they have an open-wifi network or a obvious open router port I can plug into, but that's it. (Recently my laptop batteries have dropped from four hours to 30 minutes, so I'm finding myself needing to find power outlets...I need to get a new battery.)
And I use it as my normal desktop at other times simply because it's easy to keep one workspace, and the machine is fast enough. (Plus, of course, it is my work computer, and my other computer is not.)
But, yes, people in office buildings should just have desktops, although I'm not a fan of the 'portable workspace'...it's really absurd that businesses can't give their workers a fricking dedicated workspace. I actually think it's absurd they stick them in cubicles.
Still, I find myself surrounded with a lot of people who don't actually seem to use it that way. At best they lug it around as a portable presentation unit and the only reason they take it home is that it might get stolen if they leave it at the office. Compared to having a serious multihead desktop with fast disk and decent amounts of memory, it just seems like a bad compromise for the limited advantage they gain.
A lot of people think of laptops as a status symbol for some unknown reason, when in reality it's a 'less powerful computer you can move around easily and sometimes use without even a table'. And netbook are 'even less powerful computers designed to be held in your lap'.
It is possibly the stupidest status symbol ever, and it is idiotic to have to carry it around so it won't get stolen.
Also, I'm working on getting my laptop multi-headed, via a USB video card. Right now it's my workspace that is the limitation.
I know, these people are starting to piss me off.
Telsa has problems reaching the level of supply to match their demand. That seems like the perfect sort of company to loan money to. They will build another factory somewhere, hire more workers, and make more cars. A win for everyone, except morons who think 'the rich' need to be punished by making them buy gasoline-powered cars, and are too stupid to realize that early adopters pay higher prices than everyone else...that early adopters are, in a sense, ripped off.
Telsa's problems are pretty much the opposite of any of the big three, whose problem is that their cars suck and they spend too much time and energy on stupid stuff. They sell fifty cars each when there's actually only maybe ten different makes of cars people buy, with maybe two different models of each, standard and luxury.
Instead they have entire divisions of 'nameplates', selling mostly identical cars, and think they're clever for reusing the same chassis and engine.
And modestly stupid, as people don't want to 'know' what google updater is doing, they just want to turn it the fuck off.
And it's damn stupid for disclosure, because if you think google is doing something dastardly with google update, they could have just, duh, release source with that part missing.
Not that I'm entirely sure why people would be running Google applications if they didn't trust google not to do bad things to the computer.
I don't like auto-updates, but don't really mind if the application checks for updates. I use filehippo's update checker to do updates, but I'm okay if the program itself does it, although I turn if off whenever I can. I run filehippo's checker once a week.
But I loathe background programs that run all the time that do updates. What the hell? Is this some sort of ego thing?
No, your program is not important enough to have a background task to update it. It's probably not important enough to have a background task at all. You want it to update itself, it can wait until it's running.
Of course, what I'd really like is for Microsoft to get their fucking act together and make it trivial for third-parties to add things that show up during Windows Updates.
The vast majority of gamers are casual gamers and most games run just fine on laptops. That's why "The Sims" franchise is the best selling game of all time.
No, they aren't. The vast majority of game players are casual. 'Gamer' is a specific term referring to people who build high end machines with the intent of getting the most graphic and CPU performance from them in order to play the newest games.
And they always upgrade their computers, when they aren't buying entirely new ones.
I wasn't talking about people buying laptops that can run games. I have a few games on my laptop. NWN1 runs fine on it. Scummvm runs everything fine.
I was talking about the $2000 and up 'gamer laptops', when in the actual universe it would always be better to build a damn gaming computer with handles and then buy a cheap laptop. And, no, gamers do not play on laptop keyboards. They play on fucking custom keyboards with rows of extra buttons macro'd to hotkeys.
If your laptop costs less than $2000, I'm not talking about it in any way, shape, or form. I was talking about the specific 'desktop replacement' laptops designed to run the (almost) newest games. Which are, as I said, damn stupid purchases.
I understand that when you read 'gamer laptops', you thought 'gamer=person who plays computer games' and 'laptop=any laptop', and thought I said 'playing any game on a laptop is stupid'.
No. That's not what I meant by 'gamer', which is a specific self-identified subset of computer owners, and that's not what I meant by 'gamer laptop', which are absurdly expensive laptops designed to be purchased by that subset.
Another thing, and I haven't been able to watch your video yet but I know how it works here, these machines all seem to have huge half inch gaps between the touchscreen and the actual display.
Combine that with parallax from the displays being at different angles to different height people, and the candidates being lined up with no space between each other, and you don't need any damn 'drift' to select the wrong person.
Someone will have to do the actual math, but height differences of three feet from two feet away with a parallax on the other side of a half inch will result in presses being a fair distance off even if the machine is magically perfect.
It's not a mechanical problem, it's a damn design flaw caused by purchasing cheap touch screens that mount on top of displays, instead of ones built in. And at least normal computer touch screens are used by people sitting in chairs...these touch screens are used by people standing anywhere in the voting booth.
Some people need a portable computer. I don't know why you say you don't know why people have them, and then state the explicit reason they do: They need a computer they can easily haul from place to place, and can use to some extent without any accessories except maybe a wireless mouse in their laptop bag.
I, for example, work from home, and my work computer (I'm a web designer) is a Toshiba Satellite laptop, it was about $650, purchased for me by my job about three years ago. It can handle everything I need it to do, up to and including Photoshop. (Now that I've upped the RAM to 2 gig.) It's hooked to my monitor and keyboard and mouse so people don't even realize 'my computer' is a laptop. I've had people ask if they can use my laptop while I'm sitting typing...at my laptop.
So it behaves exactly like a low-end desktop PC, for maybe $200 more...but I can pick it up and carry it into work when I go there. Or take to my hotel room on business trips. Or when visiting clients. Or carry it when visiting the family if some work emergency pops up.
My laptop is actually hooked into a KVM where the other side is my gaming computer, which was actually about the same price as my laptop. But is, of course, a tower.
Both 'portable low-end desktop replacement' and 'ultra-thin carry-anywhere portable web browser' laptops have their places. No, the category of computer that doesn't make any sense is gaming laptops. Just buy an easily luggable case with shock mounts for the hard drives. No one should play fricking modern computer games in their lap or on a laptop display. You just paid a $1000 premium to make your game computer non-upgradable, good thinking there.
I remember when we used to haul CRTs for lan parties and hook up everything there...you guys can haul fricking LCD displays, one of those portable 'cube' cases with handles, and a wireless mouse and keyboard and even a wifi card built in. It's like 20 pounds of equipment and three damn cables to plug in, as opposed to our 60 pounds and miles of wiring.
If you're walking long distances with a laptop, instead of spending money on a lighter laptop, spend money on a backpack to put it in so it doesn't require constant correction of your balance.
You can carry a weight on your back for about ten times as long as you can carry it on one shoulder.
The best people to go for cheap desktop replacements are Toshiba. You can buy reasonable ones for about $500-$600 if you're not going to run games and don't care about graphics performance.
Incidentally, attempting to buy a laptop to run games on is the stupidest waste of money ever. You'll never get one as good as a desktop machine, your battery performance will suck, and you can't upgrade the video card or DVD to blueray or add another hard drive to hold your ISOs or whatever. And who the hell plays games in their lap on that little keyboard? If you're setting it down and plugging in a keyboard and mouse, you don't need a 'laptop'!
Just buy a easily portable case with shock mounts for the hard drive, ya fools. They make them with handholds and everything. Plug in a wireless keyboard and mouse, hook up a flat panel, set it all on a table where you can easily get to the wiring to disconnect. Maybe even use a USB hub as a docking station.
And you've got something that's almost as easy as a laptop to tote to someone's house for a lan party or into your living room to hook up to your TV. Yet cost you $600 for a tricked out machine instead of $3000. And then spend another $500 on a nice laptop to websurf and watch TV in the kitchen or when you're at the library or airport, but isn't capable of playing Call of Duty 4.
No, trying to make the claim that Rush Limbaugh speaks for the whole of the Republican Party is poisoning things. Any neutral observer can see how that's as absurd as trying to say that Michael Moore speaks for all Democrats.
Any neutral observer could have claimed that as of a few months ago. They could have said it was an exaggeration.
They certainly can't claim it now that the head of the RNC had to apologize to him.
But you're still operating in the fantasy universe where the Democrat's and Republican's response to being linked to their fringe is the same, and, as has been pointed out repeatedly, it's not. The Democrat's fringe are a bunch of people the politicians ignore. (Hell, they even ignore people they shouldn't.)
The Republican's fringe is their base. Owned by Rush and Malkin and a bunch of other wackjobs.
How about the "Bush lied, people died!" crowd that make excuses for Clinton's perjury?
Um. The point of that was to contrast Bush's lies with Clinton's. Clinton lied, no one died, he got impeached. Bush lied, people died...
The whole point of that expression is that both presidents lied. One of them got people killed, one of them got impeached.
And is it worth pointing out that quite a lot of people on the left feel that Clinton did something wrong at the time. They just didn't feel it warranted removal from office. (For example, moveon.org was created with the premise that congress should censure the president and...move on.)
It's probably not worth pointing out, because in your imaginary universe everyone on the left was lining up defending the president, instead of just saying 'Hmmm...lying to cover up an affair doesn't really seem like a good reason to remove a president from office.'.(1)
And how about the far left fringe that shouts at the top of their lungs about "civil rights" while simultaneously trying to gut the 2nd amendment?
But, as has been pointed out, the far left has almost no connection to the Democratic politicians. Whereas the far right apparently owns the RNC.
What about all of the Democrats blaming Bush for gutting the regulatory structure while remaining silent on all those regulations that Clinton did away with?
Which Democrats would that be? Because I actually remember Clinton's administration and he was constantly criticized by the left for being too far to the right, fiscally, and removing regulations.
If you're saying he's not criticized now, well, no. That was a decade ago, and it's akin to criticizing the guy who used to drive the car for not getting the oil changed when the guy after him poured gasoline on it and set it on fire.
Incidentally, it takes a hell of lot of nerve for the right to criticize Clinton for being too far to the right fiscally and doing exactly what the right wanted. But is sure is funny watching Republicans pointing to their fiscal deregulation policies, implemented with the help of Democrats, as the problem. Yeah, we sorta already knew that. The fact the Democrats participated isn't going to make us elect Republicans, it's going to make us elect Democrats who are actually on the left fiscally.
Rush isn't "in charge" of the right any more than Keith Olbermann is "in charge" of the left.
Except, of course, politicians on the left feel free to diss Olberman. (And he, meanwhile, has been absolutely critical of the Obama administration the past few weeks, and I have to agree with him.)
I do find the obsession with him to be quite amusing though. I've always found him to be a bit of a jackass myself but I do get a kick out of seeing Liberals enraged to the point of trying to legislate [wikipedia.org] against him.
Meanwhile, conservatives are attempt to require us to applease Odin.
Call me cynical, but it seems to me that if you run your whole campaign on the promise of a "new kind of politics", you should probably refrain from engaging in the old kind of politics that you claimed was poisoning the atmosphere.
So somehow complaining about the hate spewing from the right is, itself, poisoning things?
It's amazing the level that the American people have ingested the rhetoric of the right.
Look, the fundamental rule of the GOP is to stand there and accuse your opponent of doing exactly what you're doing fifty times more. They've done it for decades.
The only way to make them stop is to actually point it out. Not just point out that they are factually incorrect about the left doing that, but then you have to remember it and, when the right changes direction and does exactly the same thing, you have to then point it out to everyone.
I.e, when the far right fringe is okay with imprisoning Americans without charges, but has a hissy fit over voluntary national service organizations, calling them 'reeducation camps', or who think that FEMA laws are a conspiracy to implement martial law, whereas the military actually imprisoning people isn't...someone need to actually point that to the public, so the public can see that those people are fucking loons who have no actual philosophical objections to anything, and are simply 'pro-right' and 'anti-left'.
Which was the original intent of Obama's comments, pointing out how Rush had suddenly started saying 'unamerican things' like wanting the president to fail that he'd been claiming the left was doing for the past eight years.
But then, hilarious, it happened on another level, because he correctly said that Rush spoke for the right, which resulted in some sort of meltdown among the right, which had worked for decades on the convenient idea that Rush would repeat whatever message they wanted, but wasn't 'really' part of the right and they didn't have to explain anything he said, because he was just some guy.
Rush, however, had other ideas, and it turns out he was right about who was in charge.
It isn't 'poisoning the atmosphere' to question who's in charge of the right and what Rush's role is when obviously the right itself doesn't even know. It's a valid question.
You don't need to do that, what you do need to do is make sure they can't get physical access to the secure computer. I.e., can't accidentally or purposefully plug in flash drives or whatever. Same with the network connection. Lock the box in a cabinet, monitor, keyboard, and mouse cables exit from the front, everything else exits inside the walls.(1)
They're extremely unlikely to confuse the two while using them. As someone pointed out, on one you've got a web browser, and on the other you have a control interface. You can't get to the interface on the insecure one, and in the unlikely event they fire up a web browser on the secure one, they aren't getting anywhere. Just make sure they don't put insecure media in the secure one.
I'd actually argue that this would be a perfect situation for thin clients. Don't give people a secure computer. Give them a secure dumb terminal.
1) And while you're at it, use PS/2 mice and keyboards. Because guess what you can do with access to a plugged-in USB keyboard and enough time? Rig a USB port. And plug in a flash drive.