"Management is #1, shareholders are #2, customers and employees are a necessary evil, and should be disposed of as soon as possible"
Funny how these guys call themselve's "Supply-siders" as far as economic theory goes. They're all for strengthening the stake in the supply side of the economy. Except when it comes to the Labor Supply. . . .
Um, so how exactly does one limit predatory practices without excessive regulations. I'd really like to know. In fact, I think about 6 billion people would really like to know.
I was also "ranked and yanked" (at a very large software company).
We had a re-org, and after several years under a good manager, who was promoted up the chain, I was moved from being a player on a successful team, to a different team, with a manager in a different office 3000 miles away - this office was formerly a competitor our parent company bought.
Basically, my new manager had me filed under "expendible" for about a year before it happened.
You can just tell these things by how appointments are kept, and how fast equipment comes. I wasn't feeling the love, that's for sure. She was waiting for an excuse, any excuse to get rid of her most experienced, and highest-paid team member, who was a pain in the ass to her little empire. Well, sooner or later, in my profession (support) you run into a disgruntled customer. No matter how good you are, you just can't make some people happy - and sometimes you're fighting a team effort, and sometimes YOU, as the customer's point of contact, get blamed when they're frustrated. And that was all the excuse my boss needed to get rid of the one person that was a threat to her job.
I was VERY fortunate to have found work in the space of about 30 days. But I've taken a huge pay cut - and I'm very near the end of my rope, because my savings are now gone, and it looks like I'm not going to be able to continue making my house payments - so I'm probably going to be forced to move.
I think that what's REALLY needed is to think outside of the box.
We know of short term goals - produce some mass-based shielding, polymers, hydrogen, etc. yadda yadda.
Long range solutions, however, would be best implemented by producing an actual magnetic field. Obviously this requires a buttload of energy.
Energy seems to solve just about all of the problems of space travel.
In other words, our current energy producing or storing technology is the REAL problem. Long-term, we really need to address that.
Once we have enough raw power generation capability on a spacecraft, (basically repealing the second law of thermodynamics) a whole lot of these other problems just go away. Then, your main problem is eliminating waste heat (the other thermodynamics issue).
Yeah, propellant is still a sticky issue. How to make sure the ship has enough propellant for accelleration and decelleration. Expelling smaller amounts at greater energy helps. But finding a way to propel ships without expending reaction mass (basically, repealling Newton's 3rd law) is another major hurdle.
Additionally, I've found some CRT iMacs for $400-$500 on eBay. New, you couldn't touch some of these for less than $1200. Used, they're still EXCELLENT OS X machines for email and web browsing, and doing homework on, for my kids. Beats the heck out of the $800 eMac, and $1300 flatpanel iMac.
The two I got were 500 and 600 MHz, G3, LOADED with RAM (512 Meg each), no scratches or scuffs on the case, nice and quiet, haven't had a single hang or other hiccup with them, even with my 7 year old daughter. (no, I didn't give her Admin privs). I don't expect them to be deprecated, OS-support-wise, for at least another 3 years, and perhaps, continue to be servicable for another 5.
I wouldn't touch a NEW Apple product with a 10-foot pole. My rule is NEVER buy retail from Apple again.
IMO - the flatpanel iMac is nice, but if Apple would sell the CRT iMacs at a 500MHz level, for $500, they'd absolutely CREAM the Wintel market. Steve Jobs would say "that's yesterday's computer" - but the thing is, people aren't willing to pay $1500 a pop to outfit their kids with a homework machine or email terminal. They're willing to pay that for their main desktop system, but for folks who have 2, 3, 4 kids, that's $6000. PLUS software. (which is now turning out to be an ongoing expense) PLUS internet. PLUS electricity. Insanity. The "digital lifestyle" that Apple is touting, ain't ever going to happen with their current business model. What good is having email, if only Dad can afford to have his own computer. If none of the kids' friends have computers, because their families can't afford them. So who exactly are they going to email? Nobody. The only thing email's going to do for them is bring them SPAM. So here's an entire segment of society that's going to simply drop-out and unplug from the internet and Steve's "digital lifestyle" because, "digital lifestyle" is only for the upper-upper-middle-class. And there's Apple's 2% of the computer market. And of course, the upper-class won't do email, because that's for the peasants.
I bought a dual 2ghz G5 on ebay for $2700. They retail from Apple for $2999. The same machine had been used by someone doing a magazine review, repackaged, and sold on ebay. Everything was still in it's wrapper. I'm 100% satisfied.
(I then went out and bought 1 gig of 3rd party RAM for half the price the Apple RAM would have cost).
Especially since this one was not plagued with the "noisy power supply" problem (I asked the seller first) - you can't get THAT guarantee from Apple.
Apple sets it. You can't re-sell Apple products below this set level. Nobody can. Yes, Apple has been sued for this. (not successfully IIRC). In fact, Apple HAS successfully sued resellers for selling under MAP. They put some of them out of business - they were called "Grey-market" MACs, they were bought overseas, and sold into the US market. (some people ended up frying the power supplies because they were set to 240 instead of 120).
Other industries have also been sued for MAP, and gotten their asses handed to them. But since Apple is *NOT* a monopoly, they can get away with it. Don't like it? Buy a competitor's product.
"Diebold management might be solidly Republican but there is no way they could trust their engineers to join them in a criminal conspiracy. "
I don't think it's all that big of a stretch. When MANY Rush Limbaugh listeners actually believe that ALL democrats are criminals, that the idea of the Democratic party is unpatriotic, that it supports communism and terrorism. . . there are a LOT of people who believe this. They believe that NOT doing anything in their power, within the law or not (because the laws that prevent this are unjust and unamerican), to stop the Democrats, is tantamount to treason. (Read the Anne Coulter book if you don't believe me).
It is my fond desire that those contemplating on voting for Bush/Cheney in '04, will contemplate some of the less savory implications that would be sure to follow.
Re:A comprehensive discussion of gerrymandering...
on
Gerrymandering by Computer
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
.....both sides seem guilty of gerrymandering whenever possible.
Then there's the sort-of-insectoid race called the "Priest-Kings" in the John Norman, Gor series (sorry, spoiler for the first 4 books before you learn who the priest-kings really are).
They're not evil, inherently, but they had a factional split where the evil ones controlled for a while, and were headed for suicide because the evil ones weren't interested in recovering the only queen-egg they had left. But then there was a power struggle and the good ones took over. But they still acted sort of evil, because, well, they didn't think like humans, so most humans would interpret their actions (or lack of actions) as evil, when in fact, they weren't.
About the 4th or 5th book, where John Norman deals with the Priest-Kings and their biology, society, and technology, is actually really, really, damn good classic Sci Fi.
What does this have to do with sexual slavery of women to big strong hairy warriors? Not much. Don't read past book 7 or so of this series.
There. That's my mini-review.
Oh yeah, and Gor is located at the L2 Lagrange Point of the Earth-Sun system. Kind of a neat concept for back in 1965.
. . . and I was looking forward to spending my autumn years watching her take out her teeth at night, and changing her "adult daipers" - but I guess camwhoring is a sport for the young.
Re:I've been waiting for a class action
on
Stealth Inflation
·
· Score: 1
They *did* try to ban the ATM fees in San Francisco. (in some cases, it's $10.00.)
But it was overturned at the FEDERAL level. So much for our "state's rights" Republican party. ..
The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war. Now your children won't have to learn "Duck and Cover!"
Duck and cover? What the hell? My kids are going to have to learn duck and cover because instead of going after Iran or Pakistan or North Korea, where they really DO have WMD *AND* delivery systems, we wasted time and resources on Bush's boondoggle in Iraq!
Objectively looking at the scorecard, I'd say the terrorists are winning.
I'd have to agree. I hear Foxheads all the time saying that "no terrorist attacks on US Soil since 9/11 is proof that Bush's policies work" - When, in fact, Al Qaeda hasn't attacked on US soil because 9/11 *worked* for them, they achieved their objective, they got us out of Saudi Arabia, and they made us sacrafice our freedom (via PATRIOT act). Now they're working on the next step - terrorist bombings in Saudi and Turkey ought to tell you what their next objective is.
Mars' atmosphere has all of the problems and none of the benefits of a REAL atmosphere.
The only thing Mars' atmosphere is good for is saving propellant on aerobraking. Otherwise, it's only a hazard to incoming craft who have to deal with re-entry (or just plain entry). That's one problem that Mars has that the moon does not.
It's not thick enough to be useful for aerodynamic lift for aircraft. It does not contain the elements necessary to sustain life. It does not protect against solar radiation. It does not maintain a temperature range necessary to sustain life. It gives adverse weather a medium to operate in (ie. massive dust-storms). It would interfere with the optimal function of an astronomical observatory.
Mars would also not be an efficient location from which to utilize solar-power. It's not known whether Mars has sufficient Uranium deposits to sustain nuclear power, and burning fossil fuels is obviously right-out.
Don't even get me started on the technical hurdles to getting people TO Mars. The best solution to THAT problem I've ever heard was the room full of scientists who all volunteered to happily take a one-way-trip. (hint: that's not a solution. that's a compromise).
Finally - if we go to the Moon, we could always go to Mars later. The Moon is closer, more well-understood, and has clear benefits, both scientific, and economic. I mean, what the hell, why not Titan?
- - Now, politically speaking, it's always amazed me at how schizophrenic space exploration. As far as political ideology goes.
It always seems like it's the Right who end up giving real support to space exploration. The Left end up ignoring it usually. And apparently, it's the Right's penchant for Jingoism and Pissing Contests that make it happen.
Because ideologically, Space Exploration goes against pretty much everything else the Right stands for: Religious sucking-up (Bible says the Earth is flat, and the moon is simply a light in the sky, God gave us the Earth, but didn't give us permission to have the Moon, and it's all science anyway, which is just a conspiracy to force our kids to learn about the lie that is Evolution). Fiscal Responsibility/Low Taxes - spending millions on a single-shot rocket that gets burned up, so one guy can come back and tell us how awesome the view was.
And the Left, ideologically, benefits MORE - because from space exploration, we get all these cool Earth-watching satellites and data telling us about global warming and how we're destroying the environment. And it promotes science and learning, which leads our children away from ignorance and barbarism.
You'd think it would be the LEFT that would be funding space exploration more. But the deal is - and here's why it's schizophrenic; the Defense Industry are the ones who make the most money off of space exploration. And they also benefit the most from the technological development. (First, with ballistic missile technology, and now with ballistic missile interception technology). So you've got to look at space exploration as an R&D Tax Boondoggle for the Defense Industry. That's why the Left won't fund it. And why the Right will. Even though that's bass-ackwards for both party ideologies.
That's how we know that ideology really has nothing to do with how both political sides in this country operate. It's all about biting pillows for industry.
Lockheed lost a BUTTLOAD of money for the National Aerospace Plane (if you're talking about the X-33).
And SDI is not NMD, and Raytheon is cranking out PAC-3 missiles like there's a tomorrow which we don't want to spend in a radioactive cloud. So I think SDI was a roaring success, just a tad too optimistic with regard to schedule. . . SDI's gonna happen. It's just not going to be happening on a feasible scale for about 30 years. It's a worthwhile investment, considering how poorly the non-proliferation effort has gone. ($150Billion to invade a country with NO WMD, while Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, etc are developing WMD and delivery systems unmolested.)
Well, since all the money that went into the stock market in the 1990's ended up in accounts in Barbados belonging to corrupt executives who remain unpunished by the current Administration, I wouldn't say that the stock market was a good investment.
"I've also seen pornware smart enough to modify system DLLs AND the copy in dllcache. sfc.exe fixes that sort of thing, "
That's a neat trick - because supposedly, only something Certified by Microsoft (TM) can do that, through MSI. Unless the moron user clicked "OK, Trust the unknown code from singaporeboysluts.com". . ..
You've bought a DELL. Not a computer. You've bought a DELL. Understand?
A computer is an entirely different thing altogether. You can do whatever you want with a computer. With a Dell, because they sell you, software, service, warranty, etc. you're subject to the limitations of their EULA.
If you want to buy a DELL, and modify it so that it is a computer, that's up to you. But don't expect to be covered by their warranty. In other words, if you want a COMPUTER - you're probably better off just buying one, and not paying extra money (ie. privacy compromised by spyware) for the DELL product - whatever the hell that is supposed to be.
I think we should settle this in a manner similar to that shown in the excellent Kirk Douglas movie; The Vikings. ..
Pin Hillary Rosen to a wall, with her long braids spread out.
The lawyers from the RIAA and Jon take turns throwing axes at her. If the RIAA hits Hillary's face, they were wrong. If Jon is able to sever her braids, without hitting her face, he not only wins the appeal, but gets to keep her as a serving wench.
That's just a code word for; "doesn't make any freaking sense, no matter what twisted ideology you try to slap onto it, except to the congressmen who got money"
Given that it took about 3.5 billion years for life to get going, it seems unlikely that planets around Vega have (or ever could have) interesting lifeforms,
Define "interesting" - Some scientists are still finding "interesting" the life-like chemical reactions detected by Viking on Mars. "interesting" enough to keep sending more probes.
As long as there are human beings, there will be people looking under every rock in the universe for something "interesting" - even if it's a guessed-at fossil of a shred of DNA from 3 billion years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
"Management is #1, shareholders are #2, customers and employees are a necessary evil, and should be disposed of as soon as possible"
Funny how these guys call themselve's "Supply-siders" as far as economic theory goes. They're all for strengthening the stake in the supply side of the economy. Except when it comes to the Labor Supply. . . .
Um, so how exactly does one limit predatory practices without excessive regulations. I'd really like to know. In fact, I think about 6 billion people would really like to know.
I was also "ranked and yanked" (at a very large software company).
We had a re-org, and after several years under a good manager, who was promoted up the chain, I was moved from being a player on a successful team, to a different team, with a manager in a different office 3000 miles away - this office was formerly a competitor our parent company bought.
Basically, my new manager had me filed under "expendible" for about a year before it happened.
You can just tell these things by how appointments are kept, and how fast equipment comes. I wasn't feeling the love, that's for sure. She was waiting for an excuse, any excuse to get rid of her most experienced, and highest-paid team member, who was a pain in the ass to her little empire. Well, sooner or later, in my profession (support) you run into a disgruntled customer. No matter how good you are, you just can't make some people happy - and sometimes you're fighting a team effort, and sometimes YOU, as the customer's point of contact, get blamed when they're frustrated. And that was all the excuse my boss needed to get rid of the one person that was a threat to her job.
I was VERY fortunate to have found work in the space of about 30 days. But I've taken a huge pay cut - and I'm very near the end of my rope, because my savings are now gone, and it looks like I'm not going to be able to continue making my house payments - so I'm probably going to be forced to move.
This recovery is AS fake as the "WMD evidence".
I think that what's REALLY needed is to think outside of the box.
We know of short term goals - produce some mass-based shielding, polymers, hydrogen, etc. yadda yadda.
Long range solutions, however, would be best implemented by producing an actual magnetic field. Obviously this requires a buttload of energy.
Energy seems to solve just about all of the problems of space travel.
In other words, our current energy producing or storing technology is the REAL problem. Long-term, we really need to address that.
Once we have enough raw power generation capability on a spacecraft, (basically repealing the second law of thermodynamics) a whole lot of these other problems just go away. Then, your main problem is eliminating waste heat (the other thermodynamics issue).
Yeah, propellant is still a sticky issue. How to make sure the ship has enough propellant for accelleration and decelleration. Expelling smaller amounts at greater energy helps. But finding a way to propel ships without expending reaction mass (basically, repealling Newton's 3rd law) is another major hurdle.
Additionally, I've found some CRT iMacs for $400-$500 on eBay. New, you couldn't touch some of these for less than $1200. Used, they're still EXCELLENT OS X machines for email and web browsing, and doing homework on, for my kids. Beats the heck out of the $800 eMac, and $1300 flatpanel iMac.
The two I got were 500 and 600 MHz, G3, LOADED with RAM (512 Meg each), no scratches or scuffs on the case, nice and quiet, haven't had a single hang or other hiccup with them, even with my 7 year old daughter. (no, I didn't give her Admin privs). I don't expect them to be deprecated, OS-support-wise, for at least another 3 years, and perhaps, continue to be servicable for another 5.
I wouldn't touch a NEW Apple product with a 10-foot pole. My rule is NEVER buy retail from Apple again.
IMO - the flatpanel iMac is nice, but if Apple would sell the CRT iMacs at a 500MHz level, for $500, they'd absolutely CREAM the Wintel market. Steve Jobs would say "that's yesterday's computer" - but the thing is, people aren't willing to pay $1500 a pop to outfit their kids with a homework machine or email terminal. They're willing to pay that for their main desktop system, but for folks who have 2, 3, 4 kids, that's $6000. PLUS software. (which is now turning out to be an ongoing expense) PLUS internet. PLUS electricity. Insanity.
The "digital lifestyle" that Apple is touting, ain't ever going to happen with their current business model. What good is having email, if only Dad can afford to have his own computer. If none of the kids' friends have computers, because their families can't afford them. So who exactly are they going to email? Nobody. The only thing email's going to do for them is bring them SPAM. So here's an entire segment of society that's going to simply drop-out and unplug from the internet and Steve's "digital lifestyle" because, "digital lifestyle" is only for the upper-upper-middle-class. And there's Apple's 2% of the computer market. And of course, the upper-class won't do email, because that's for the peasants.
EXACTLY.
I bought a dual 2ghz G5 on ebay for $2700. They retail from Apple for $2999. The same machine had been used by someone doing a magazine review, repackaged, and sold on ebay. Everything was still in it's wrapper. I'm 100% satisfied.
(I then went out and bought 1 gig of 3rd party RAM for half the price the Apple RAM would have cost).
Especially since this one was not plagued with the "noisy power supply" problem (I asked the seller first) - you can't get THAT guarantee from Apple.
It's called Minimum Advertised Price.
Apple sets it. You can't re-sell Apple products below this set level. Nobody can.
Yes, Apple has been sued for this. (not successfully IIRC).
In fact, Apple HAS successfully sued resellers for selling under MAP. They put some of them out of business - they were called "Grey-market" MACs, they were bought overseas, and sold into the US market. (some people ended up frying the power supplies because they were set to 240 instead of 120).
Other industries have also been sued for MAP, and gotten their asses handed to them. But since Apple is *NOT* a monopoly, they can get away with it. Don't like it? Buy a competitor's product.
"Diebold management might be solidly Republican but there is no way they could trust their engineers to join them in a criminal conspiracy. "
I don't think it's all that big of a stretch.
When MANY Rush Limbaugh listeners actually believe that ALL democrats are criminals, that the idea of the Democratic party is unpatriotic, that it supports communism and terrorism. . . there are a LOT of people who believe this. They believe that NOT doing anything in their power, within the law or not (because the laws that prevent this are unjust and unamerican), to stop the Democrats, is tantamount to treason. (Read the Anne Coulter book if you don't believe me).
It is my fond desire that those contemplating on voting for Bush/Cheney in '04, will contemplate some of the less savory implications that would be sure to follow.
.....both sides seem guilty of gerrymandering whenever possible.
. . . which, of course, does not make it okay.
Then there's the sort-of-insectoid race called the "Priest-Kings" in the John Norman, Gor series (sorry, spoiler for the first 4 books before you learn who the priest-kings really are).
They're not evil, inherently, but they had a factional split where the evil ones controlled for a while, and were headed for suicide because the evil ones weren't interested in recovering the only queen-egg they had left. But then there was a power struggle and the good ones took over. But they still acted sort of evil, because, well, they didn't think like humans, so most humans would interpret their actions (or lack of actions) as evil, when in fact, they weren't.
About the 4th or 5th book, where John Norman deals with the Priest-Kings and their biology, society, and technology, is actually really, really, damn good classic Sci Fi.
What does this have to do with sexual slavery of women to big strong hairy warriors? Not much. Don't read past book 7 or so of this series.
There. That's my mini-review.
Oh yeah, and Gor is located at the L2 Lagrange Point of the Earth-Sun system. Kind of a neat concept for back in 1965.
Besides, how do you explain to the Amercian people that getting to L2 is an amazing accomplishment?
Hire ZZTop. They'll explain it.
. . . and I was looking forward to spending my autumn years watching her take out her teeth at night, and changing her "adult daipers" - but I guess camwhoring is a sport for the young.
They *did* try to ban the ATM fees in San Francisco. (in some cases, it's $10.00.)
.
But it was overturned at the FEDERAL level. So much for our "state's rights" Republican party. .
The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war. Now your children won't have to learn "Duck and Cover!"
Duck and cover? What the hell? My kids are going to have to learn duck and cover because instead of going after Iran or Pakistan or North Korea, where they really DO have WMD *AND* delivery systems, we wasted time and resources on Bush's boondoggle in Iraq!
Objectively looking at the scorecard, I'd say the terrorists are winning.
I'd have to agree. I hear Foxheads all the time saying that "no terrorist attacks on US Soil since 9/11 is proof that Bush's policies work" - When, in fact, Al Qaeda hasn't attacked on US soil because 9/11 *worked* for them, they achieved their objective, they got us out of Saudi Arabia, and they made us sacrafice our freedom (via PATRIOT act). Now they're working on the next step - terrorist bombings in Saudi and Turkey ought to tell you what their next objective is.
Mars' atmosphere has all of the problems and none of the benefits of a REAL atmosphere.
The only thing Mars' atmosphere is good for is saving propellant on aerobraking. Otherwise, it's only a hazard to incoming craft who have to deal with re-entry (or just plain entry). That's one problem that Mars has that the moon does not.
It's not thick enough to be useful for aerodynamic lift for aircraft.
It does not contain the elements necessary to sustain life.
It does not protect against solar radiation.
It does not maintain a temperature range necessary to sustain life.
It gives adverse weather a medium to operate in (ie. massive dust-storms).
It would interfere with the optimal function of an astronomical observatory.
Mars would also not be an efficient location from which to utilize solar-power. It's not known whether Mars has sufficient Uranium deposits to sustain nuclear power, and burning fossil fuels is obviously right-out.
Don't even get me started on the technical hurdles to getting people TO Mars. The best solution to THAT problem I've ever heard was the room full of scientists who all volunteered to happily take a one-way-trip. (hint: that's not a solution. that's a compromise).
Finally - if we go to the Moon, we could always go to Mars later. The Moon is closer, more well-understood, and has clear benefits, both scientific, and economic. I mean, what the hell, why not Titan?
- -
Now, politically speaking, it's always amazed me at how schizophrenic space exploration. As far as political ideology goes.
It always seems like it's the Right who end up giving real support to space exploration. The Left end up ignoring it usually. And apparently, it's the Right's penchant for Jingoism and Pissing Contests that make it happen.
Because ideologically, Space Exploration goes against pretty much everything else the Right stands for:
Religious sucking-up (Bible says the Earth is flat, and the moon is simply a light in the sky, God gave us the Earth, but didn't give us permission to have the Moon, and it's all science anyway, which is just a conspiracy to force our kids to learn about the lie that is Evolution). Fiscal Responsibility/Low Taxes - spending millions on a single-shot rocket that gets burned up, so one guy can come back and tell us how awesome the view was.
And the Left, ideologically, benefits MORE - because from space exploration, we get all these cool Earth-watching satellites and data telling us about global warming and how we're destroying the environment. And it promotes science and learning, which leads our children away from ignorance and barbarism.
You'd think it would be the LEFT that would be funding space exploration more. But the deal is - and here's why it's schizophrenic; the Defense Industry are the ones who make the most money off of space exploration. And they also benefit the most from the technological development. (First, with ballistic missile technology, and now with ballistic missile interception technology). So you've got to look at space exploration as an R&D Tax Boondoggle for the Defense Industry. That's why the Left won't fund it. And why the Right will. Even though that's bass-ackwards for both party ideologies.
That's how we know that ideology really has nothing to do with how both political sides in this country operate. It's all about biting pillows for industry.
Lockheed lost a BUTTLOAD of money for the National Aerospace Plane (if you're talking about the X-33).
And SDI is not NMD, and Raytheon is cranking out PAC-3 missiles like there's a tomorrow which we don't want to spend in a radioactive cloud. So I think SDI was a roaring success, just a tad too optimistic with regard to schedule. . . SDI's gonna happen. It's just not going to be happening on a feasible scale for about 30 years. It's a worthwhile investment, considering how poorly the non-proliferation effort has gone. ($150Billion to invade a country with NO WMD, while Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, etc are developing WMD and delivery systems unmolested.)
Well, since all the money that went into the stock market in the 1990's ended up in accounts in Barbados belonging to corrupt executives who remain unpunished by the current Administration, I wouldn't say that the stock market was a good investment.
If you wanted to leave, you could
Tell that to Spartacus.
"I've also seen pornware smart enough to modify system DLLs AND the copy in dllcache. sfc.exe fixes that sort of thing, "
.
That's a neat trick - because supposedly, only something Certified by Microsoft (TM) can do that, through MSI. Unless the moron user clicked "OK, Trust the unknown code from singaporeboysluts.com". . .
You've bought a DELL.
Not a computer.
You've bought a DELL.
Understand?
A computer is an entirely different thing altogether. You can do whatever you want with a computer. With a Dell, because they sell you, software, service, warranty, etc. you're subject to the limitations of their EULA.
If you want to buy a DELL, and modify it so that it is a computer, that's up to you. But don't expect to be covered by their warranty.
In other words, if you want a COMPUTER - you're probably better off just buying one, and not paying extra money (ie. privacy compromised by spyware) for the DELL product - whatever the hell that is supposed to be.
At least you didn't have to take it apart after their kid stuck a mini-CD into the slot-loader. THAT was a joy.
I think we should settle this in a manner similar to that shown in the excellent Kirk Douglas movie; The Vikings. . .
Pin Hillary Rosen to a wall, with her long braids spread out.
The lawyers from the RIAA and Jon take turns throwing axes at her. If the RIAA hits Hillary's face, they were wrong. If Jon is able to sever her braids, without hitting her face, he not only wins the appeal, but gets to keep her as a serving wench.
That's just a code word for;
"doesn't make any freaking sense, no matter what twisted ideology you try to slap onto it, except to the congressmen who got money"
Given that it took about 3.5 billion years for life to get going, it seems unlikely that planets around Vega have (or ever could have) interesting lifeforms,
Define "interesting" -
Some scientists are still finding "interesting" the life-like chemical reactions detected by Viking on Mars. "interesting" enough to keep sending more probes.
As long as there are human beings, there will be people looking under every rock in the universe for something "interesting" - even if it's a guessed-at fossil of a shred of DNA from 3 billion years ago.