> Agreed- and a good way to prove it would be to stop worrying about the stock market, profits, > and low taxes for the rich
We have to worry about those things, especially in wartime. We need a strong economy to provide the resources to wage war.
> start confiscating technology to make war material
Eh? The government doesn't have to pay patent royalties anyway. They are allowed to use any available tech without asking. Remember that "Intellectual Property" is a fiction created by the MPAA and RIAA. Patents are just temporary monopolies granted by the government and they can ignore em.
> bring back the draft.
Don;t think that would help. This war isn't going to be won by lots of boots on the ground. If it does devolve into massed ranks of soldiers we are in deep poo poo.
> If this is truly the war between civilizations you, I, and apparently President Bush think it is, the > economy is of little consequence in comparison to survival.
Economic power is power exactly like military or diplomatic power. Each can be leveraged to impose one's will on another. So as the world's superpower power in all three spheres we should be leveraging all three as needed.
> In WWII we ended the Nazi threat in a little under 4 years by devoting 125% of our GDP to the problem.
At what cost though. Millions dead, a continent in smoking ruin, two thermonuclear blasts, etc. And on a more practical note, a Europe so traumatized as to be easy pickings for the Communists leading directly into the Cold War. If we can succeed in Iraq and more importantly, here at home against the Democrats we can win the GWOT without some of those horrific costs. The alternative is a World War where the casualty rate could quickly top the billion mark.
Exactly like Chamberlin's apeasement of Germany lead directly to millions of graves and a ruined continent, allowing Democrats to stop us from dealing with this threat while it is still managable will end up costing untold lives in a few more years when Iran has the Bomb.
> If we did the same to Islamic Terrorism, I suspect this war could be over in a matter of weeks, with both > Sunni and Shi'ites utterly destroyed, only leaving the much more moderate Sufi as the last Islamics.
Ok, just how far do you propose carrying your 'final crusade'? Just nuke em all? Clinton decimated our armed forces, claiming a "peace dividend". Or didn't you wonder how spending on domestic programs could rise and the budget still get balanced? We don't have enough troops and don't have the means of properly equiping and supplying them if we drafted a bunch of new boots to wipe out the middle east conventionally. Unless of course we went to a full War Economy but that would still take at least a year to rev up while the whole world watched and reacted.
The reason software sucks is too simple. Software sucks because we don't care. But that doens't give enough material for a whole book I guess.
Really though, it is just that simple. We know how to make software that is reliable and secure. What do people buy? There is your answer.
And now to make sure I piss off everyone lets go beyond just slagging Microsoft since that is like kicking cripples. Macs suck too. Same for Linux, and BSD. All have bugs exposed on an almost daily basis. Why? Because nobody cared enough.
Ok, so what is my solution? Not giving a rats rectum about Windows or Mac limit my rant to Linux (and a bit of BSD). Start with OpenBSD as they are the closest to getting it right. Sure there isn't much in BSD, but what IS there is as reliable as an organization their size can make it. Features be damned, make it work!
So why couldn't organizations which have more resources take that idea to it's logical conclusion? Look people, adding new features before the old ones work is pointless and leads to software that sucks. Step one should be to take the Linux Standard Base and freeze it. Audit the crap out of it for security flaws and close every single bug report. Eliminate every compiler warning. Then look at every package that isn't at 1.0 status and decide what is needed to call it done and then DO it. Then begin moving that line outward. For now the graphical desktop environments probably can't be frozen, but everything underneath can be.
What I want to know is why there would be a problem stuffing the US wire services and publications into this sifter? Where is the problem with the government READING published information? Goddamn political correctness run amok is the only reason I can think of. I swear, I want to see candidates running on a platform of "We aren't going to win the War to save civilization until the last Democrat is defeated. And a bunch of no balls having Republicans have to get the boot too." When I see such a candidate I'll not only vote for em, I'll give til it hurts and campaign for em.
Sounds extreme? No, call it "reality based". So long as more of our war efforts go into fighting off angle biting Democrats than fighting their (informal) foreign allies. Democrats want to equate Iraq == Vietnam every other day it seems, I agree. We won every battle in Vietnam but lost the war because the VC had enough votes in Congress and allies in the media. We win any military engagement in Iraq but are on the virge of losing the war because the terrorists understand how to fight the media war here. All they have to do is give the media a daily ration of blood and gore, they will do their part and splatter it on the TV, allowing the Democrats to carp and whine until we will eventually pull out. Then the terrorists and the Democrats win. The only way to avoid this fate is to realize this and wage constant and merciless war on the media and the Democrats. If the Republicans would grow a pair and get in their face each and every time the trason party opens their mouth the people would rally to their cause. Americans love winners and detest losers. Act like winners guys!
> A few reasons... the ring is kilometers long. Angling it at 30 degrees would force you to build it deep > into the ground, high into the air, or both.
They are talking about a ring two clicks across. Radius = 1km, angle = 30o. Doesn't sound like an unsurmountable problem. Let it poke out of the ground 250meters and go 750 under. Or split the differnce and angle it at 15o going 250M above and 250M below ground, still makes for a more shallow turn at the end.
> The ability to change launch direction is probably more important than the complications it adds > to the launch physics.
Probably true, unless it were only intended for launching supplies to a space station or something of that sort. But that alone could probably justify building such a launcher. Just have to come up with an easy way to catch the packages.
> You don't dump tons and tons of carbon into the atmosphere each time you launch,
Lot of good reasons this launcher is a good thing. Saving carbon emissions isn't one.
1) Considering the frequency of launches, trains, planes and automobiles spew out so much more that any quantity from rockets is lost in the noise.
2) Many rockets, like the main engines on the shuttle, burn hydrogen and are thus very clean. The SRBs do burn some nasty stuff and probably include some carbon among the waste products.
> Apparently DVD Jon is the fanatical open-source saviour some people seem to think.
I think he is attacking the problem in the weakest point. And remember, as someone currently living and working in the US publishing a removal program for FairPlay would be nothing but a one way trip to the joint.
Now look at what happens if he sells a program to add FairPlay DRM to a file. If Apple sues over it it will push the monopoly over content aspect right up in people's face.
If they don't sue, lots of new players jump into (read as sell FairPlay alongside PlaysForSure) the game and the iTunes store goes kaput. In a retailing fight for the music dollar between Apple and Walmart who is your money on? And while Apple is currently using the iTunes store as a loss leader to sell iPods and shut up the "piracy enabler' rants from the MPAA, longer term it is clear Apple does have intentions of being the 800lb gorilla of media distribution by pulling a Microsoft. (i.e. acquire a monopoly on playback hardware and leverage it into a monopoly on content distribution.)
Making the market for FairPlay a level (fair) playing field has lots of upside. No it doesn't solve the problem of DRM, but it will certainly screw with Steve's plans for world domination.
> 1. If you're mucking around with trademarks, get it in writing. Some guy at some organization posting something to a listserv > does not necessarily represent a legally binding agreement.
Someone isn't too informed. Gerv wasn't 'some guy on a listserv' he had licensing@mozilla.org as a contact address. Silly me, thinking that would make him at least semi-official. I have communicated with him in the past... and have firefox partially converted to iceweasel in my RHEL rebuild project as a result. I did basically the same thing as Debian, replaced the visible name (RH already replaces the throbber) and left the name of the package and executable alone for compatibility with RHEL. Now I'm wondering if I'm now going to have "the conversation" with Moz Corp myself. You know the one.
"But we had a deal."
"I am changing the bargain. Pray I do not change it further."
> the FSF used to ask people not to name their non-GNU projects "GNU something"
Of course they have been trying to co-opt the whole Linux movement with their insane GNU/Linux insanity. Since Linux is most obviously NOT an official GNU project it is pretty obvious why they want to glom onto it; even if it is wrong to affix one trademark to another with only a punctuation mark to seperate them without permission from both parties.
> Lets see, you were attacked by Osama bin laden an ex CIA-associated Saudi by a group of mostly saudis with > a paper trail of money linking more saudis who had a deep ideological hate for saddam hussan and who > actively tried to kill each other... Logically it must then be Iraq that is reposnible? seem logical to me....
Classic case of missing the forest for the trees. I'll try one last time before moving to another article.
To win the GWOT we must drain the fever swamps in the Middle East that UBL feeds on for new idiots to strap a bomb onto. That means we need to transform the dysfunctional countries in the region into modern Republican forms of government with modern instituitions and economies. They won't be little clones of the US, Canada or Europe because they are Islamic peoples who will need to discover their own balance in much the same way our fledgling nations balanced their religious, philisophical and political beliefs.
Now once one accepts that this is the only longterm solution the obvious question is HOW? Well one way would be to invade and smash Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq, etc. and rebuild them all as was done at the end of WWII. Downside is that after Clinton 'spent the peace dividend' we lacked the militaty force to even consider something so grand. A less expensive and probably better way would be to build a model and allow the people in the others to emulate a successful example of their own free will.
Ok, we only invade one country... Next question is obviously WHICH one? As fate would have it there was one country centrally situated that we happened to still be in a formal state of War with, was generally a nightmare waiting to happen again and was about to slip out of the UN sanctions that were part of the Cease Fire agreement that stopped Gulf War I. Basically Saddam needed killin in a bad way regardless. I think the choice was pretty easy. What part of that line of reasoning do you have a problem with?
Or lets not. I wouldn't hire an MD to design a building. I wouldn't hire a physist to give me a physical. I wouldn't hire a politician (even one I liked) to operate a particle accelerator. And I suspect nobody here finds any of these statements controversial. So why would we want to elect a scientist? If said scientist has been politically active and has positions on most of the issues of the day that I approve of then yes, I'll take a chance on letting him switch career tracks. Otherwise, nope.
The days of citizen legislators and the old Republic they served are long dead. Now we live in a semi socialist nanny state where the Feral Government runs every aspect of our daily lives. It isn't a job for amateurs anymore.
I wish it could be again, but wishing won't make it so. Doing that will require a long sustained effort to raise a new generation of Citizens willing to accept responsibility for their own affairs.
> One is a game of terrorist whack-a-mole that is a sad necessity.
If we contented ourselves with playing whack-a-mole (another way of phrasing it would be treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem btw) we will never prevail. We have to end state sponsorship or terrorism AND we must remove the circumstances that breed terrorists.
> The other is a war we started. We went in under false pretences, overthrew a government that while bad was > NEVER a real threat to us personally, and now must clean up the mess left behind.
No, Iraq IS the War on Terror. Afganistan was something that had to be cleaned up, but alone would not have ended the terrorists. It would have simply driven them elsewhere.... namely into Iran, Iraq, Syria and Somalia. Iraq would have slipped the sanctions by now (they had bribed almost everyone at the UN in charge of enforcing them, to the point they were largely meaningless at the time of the Iraq War) and been back in the business of being general villans.
But more importantly, Iraq was the perfect place to attempt to install a modern Republican form of government in the heart of the Middle East (otherwise known as the fever swamps breeding terrorism) to provide an example to the suffering masses living in tyranny. Iraq is the wedge that, if successful, bring down the House of Saud, the corrupt despot on the Egyptian throne, etc.
> Of course I have also had the insane idea that there should be an IQ test on every voter registration form. > Miss the minimum and your ballot goes in the shredder instead of the box."
I'd love that idea. Most ignorant/stupid people vote Democratic. Accuse me of flamebaiting all ya want folks, it is the nasty little open secret nobody wants to talk about. When Democrats/Progressives/etc rail about stupid people voting the wrong way it is simply misdirection. They DEPEND on the stupid, the uneducated (i.e. increasingly anyone who goes to government schools) and the politically naive. And most importantly they absolutely depend on keeping as many voters as possible in total ignorance of economics.
And while I'm bound for -1 flamebait I'll toss another live grenade. Democrats depend on voters making decisions emotionally instead of rationally. Which explains why Democrats/Progressives did noticably better after Women's Sufferage. Anyone who doesn't believe me is invited to examine the historical record. No Democratic since that event would have won office had only men been voting. Of course modern women are finally reaching educational parity with men, and having had to deal with the real world most of their lives now, so sure enough the gender gap is slowly disappearing.
So now the bug push is to make up those losses and get illegal aliens voting, on the assumption they are mostly poor, uneducated and thus ripe for the Democratic party.
> > Most Republicans are living in the real world, where there is a shooting war on.
> Which they're doing their level best to lose in the most spectacular way possible.
All too true. But they are fighting. During the opening acts of WWII and the Cold War (WWIII) we didn't exactly cover ourselves in glory either. But we knew that defeat wasn't an option and kept going and eventually won. I'm still holding out hope the Republicans will keep swinging long enough to learn how to fight this new sort of war.
Winning requires internalizing the fundamental truth of modern warfare. Battles are won and lost on the battlefield, but the war is won on the floor of the Congress and on TV. Defeat Democrats and UBL will give up since his only hope for victory lies in destroying our will to fight. Democrats lend him moral support when they lead him to believe that one election tipping their way will give him victory in Iraq. I'm NOT saying all Democrats are knowingly in league with UBL. What I am saying is that UBL doesn't care because the result, for him, is the same regardless. And I'm sad to say no small portion of Democrats don't care if they give UBL a victory, their blind hatred of Bush and their insatable lust to regain lost political power is overwhelming all other considerations.
> Ah! That explains why so many Democrats were in favor of going into Afghanistan. > (Check the congressional vote record if you don't believe me.)
Don't have to check, I was watching. Yes most Democrats voted to destroy the Taliban. As most of them voted to invade Iraq, and for the same reason. Voting otherwise would have been suicide for most of them. But from their public statements then and now it was clear that had they believed they could have been survived they would have voted against both.
Now of course every elected Democrat was 100% for Afganistan to prove they are 'serious about fighting terrorism' and obfuscate their anti-war fervor over Iraq. But I was there, watching TV and reading their ravings in newpaper columns and online. Afganistan would be a quagmire. Afganistan had resisted conquest by every major power since history began, we would suffer the fate of the British and the Russians. Afganistan was just a little pissant country Bushitler wanted to beat up to prove his manhood. You name it and some Democrat was saying it.... then.
> Iraq isn't about weapons of mass destruction! Where did you get a silly idea like that?
Where were you? War in Iraq was justified on any one of several equally valid causus beli.
1. Iraq's failure to comply with ANY of the terms of the cease fire agreement. Yes, cease fire and not peace treaty. The US (and the coalition) were still in a formal state of War with Iraq and would have remained so until they complied with their end of the terms in the cease fire. They had a free pass during the Clinton years but a new sheriff was in town. Bush was itching to resolve Iraq from inuraguation day and should have been.
2. Iraq was both a short term and longterm threat to the region. Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism. No, there has been no credible evidence linking Saddam and 9/11 however 9/11 is not the sole focus of the GWOT. ANY terrorist is an enemy, not just Al-Qaida; the whole IDEA of terrorism (wanton attacks against civilian targets intended to terrify populations into surrender) as a legitimate tool of statecraft is being fought to extermination. Iraq was the home to several notorious terrorists, including ones who had launched massive attacks on US interests and citizens. Iraq was active in training and financing terrorist organizations worldwide. Iraq paid bounties to the families of homocide bombers.
Iraq had started wars in the past and showed every indication of a willingness to do so in the future as soon as the sanctions were lifted. Which from his corruption of the UN would have been soon.
3. Every intelligence agency on earth believed Iraq had an active WMD pr
> The solution hasn't exclusively been to polarize them on the issues, but to say "if you > vote for the other guy, wolves will attack you"
And the problem for the other side is that the Republicans CAN say that and it resonates because most rational people understand there is more than just a little truth in the charge. I'm one of those voters who would love to vote against the 'spend tax money like drunken sailors' Republican party and the 'compasionate conservative liberal lite' Republican party personified by G. W. Bush. But a vote for a Democrat IS a vote for wolves eating me so I will hold my nose and go vote a straight Republican ticket in November.
I know it, you know it and UBL knows it. This is the first 'faith based war' in that one of the major political parties has decided that if they all hold hands and sing kumbya and BELIEVE real hard that the war doesn't exist that it won't exist. But reality is that which continues to exist regardless how hard one disbelieves it, and the reality is that the War will exist until both sides decide it is over, and UBL has been winning battles against the infidel since the '80s when he went up against the Soviets so it will take more than the minor setbacks we have inflicted so far to convince him and his minions to lay down arms.
Most Republicans are living in the real world, where there is a shooting war on. Most Democrats are living in a fantasy world where they are more likely to believe Bushitler blew up the WTC than to believe UBL not only did it, but that it wasn't his first successful attack. The only Democrats on the national stage who show they at least understand are Lieberman (forced from his party for his belief) and perhaps HRC, who probably understands we have a war on but is politically savvy enough to fuzz her position enough to remain viable in her insane party. Making her morally bankrupt and unfit for office regardless of which side you look at the issue from.
> These claims of warmest in a million years are hogwash as are claims that humans cause it all.
Perhaps. The problem is I'm NOT a scientist but I am a Citizen of the USA and am expected to influence my government through the use of the franchise. So my problem is whether to trust these people putting themselves out as experts. When they make statements like "warmest in a million years" that I know to be false, and are obvioulsly false to anyone with half a clue, I find it very hard to believe their assertion that "humans cause global warming" even if I cannot personally find flaws in their reasoning or data supporting that part.
Because if they ARE lying it is all too easy to cook the data to fit an agenda and there is quite a bit of evidence to support the notion that they DO have an agenda. The question of global warming and whether/how much of it is caused by human activity has become so politicized, finding impartial facts on the subject debated by rational people is simply no longer possible. Much like the rest of political discussion in this polarized environment.
What disinclines me to trust the Global Warming crowd is the astonishing degree of overlap between those who push the theory and those who have adopted what I consider the 'wrong' side of the rest of the political debate. I.e. to a very high degree of correlation those who support Global Warming support the socialist/pro terrorist side while almost every skeptic is also pulling for Western Civilization and the values of the Enlightenment.
Thankfully this overly politicized situation probably can't last much longer, one way or the other it is going to sort itself out. Either our civilization will fall into a new dark age of fanaticism or the good guys will finally grow a pair, civilization will renew itself, telling the moonbats to STFU and generally clean house among the barbarians, and we will all (meaning the whole human race) enter a new Golden Age.
And with either outcome, Global Warming (assuming it is caused by humans) will be a solved problem. If civilization falls the world population will drop along with industry, thus solving the problem. If by some miracle we pull it out solving a small problem like CO2 emissions will likely be trivial.
> Ever wonder How fast a normal climate change occurs ?
Mammoths have been discovered frozen with green plants still in their mouths. Bam! Glaciers. Of course Bushitler probably wasn't responsible for that so who cares, right?
> It all depends on which agenda they're pushing, or who's funding them.
And even if accurate, facts are usually pretty easy to abuse into supporting a political position.
Consider. These guys want you to believe the Earth is at unprecedented highs, thus we MUST panic and DO something. Something usually being defined as harmful to Western Civilization. Note that Kyoto would only limit CO2 emmissions from advanced Western nations yet allow China and the 3rd world to spew unlimited amounts of the stuff.
Now consider the unescapable fact that the Earth HAS been hotter in the past, despite the FUD coming from the enviro political hacks. Greenland wasn't given that name as some sort of horrible joke. It used to be GREEN. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth it is thought to have been much warmer than today. Note also the evidence of melting polar caps on Mars, something unlikely to be caused by humans.
Fact #1: The biggest influence on global climate is a big semi stable fusion reactor that has only been studied in detail for a fairly short period of time but is already known to vary its output on multiple cycles measured in years. Several studies indicate solar output is currently increasing.
Fact #2: More and more evidence points to Earth getting warmer.
If you are a green who secretly yearns to eliminate humanity (or at least Western Civilization's share of humanity) because of our 'raping of the earth' you leap on global warming as a way to scare people into surrendering their technological civilization, thus making it easier to achieve your goal of if not 'killing all humans', at least allowing war, pestilence and famine to thin the herd 90%. Sane people notice the earth getting warmer, Mars getting warmer and the sun shining a little brighter and connecting the dots, figure it is natural. But if it gets bad enough to interfere with our lifestyle we will do something about it. Shouldn't be all that hard.
> > Imagine the electrical feeder line that will be needed going into the station. > You mean that single 20 ga wire?
No. Power is Volts X Amps (X power factor if we are using AC but lets keep it simple, K?) Wire guage sets a practical limit to Amps and Volts is limited as well by other physical limits. Recharging in 5 minutes needs megawatt hours of energy delivered in minutes. Doing that means a crapload of both volts and amps.
> Likewise the power pump station will have a mini substation getting transmission voltage and stepping > it down to something around the distribution voltage range (maybe even lower).
No, a largish filling station will need a major substation. And the cable going into your car will be a big thick cable; a pair of large fairly rigid conductor with several redundant layers of insulation over them, probably with sensors buried in the insulation to shut the system down at the first hint of a weak spot.
> $9 is a huge amount of electricity in term of charge. passing that through a line in 5 minutes > is gonna take one HUGE ass line..
Worse. Imagine a 'gas station' of the future with a dozen 'pumps' hammering away. Imagine the electrical feeder line that will be needed going into the station. Now imagine a city, where 'gas stations' are usually on at least one, perhaps two corners of any major intersection. Now imagine one out on a lonely stretch of Interstate. All hammering away at the electrical grid by the Gigawatt/hour. Where do we get all that additional electricity? With all the major upgrading of infrastructure, increase in power station fuel costs, etc. required I wouldn't expect electric rates to remain constant, that $9 will become $50 by the time it moves from early adopter status to mainstream.... and any remaining savings on the gas bill will be more than offset by the higher electric bill.
If we start a major program of building nuke plants NOW we might be able to get ahead of the demand curve but we will still be looking at a major upgrade of the distribution grid. Everybody will have a megavolt line running through their neighborhood.
You took the wrong lesson. The true moral is to BE greedy. Greed is about grabbing all the loot you can, but does not require being stupid about it. Doing something that will hurt your haul isn't greedy, it is stupid. Which is why enlightened self interest is the best way to go. When you dig down far enough almost everything immoral is also stupid.
The premise of the submitter only holds if ALL of the search engines hang tough. If only Google tells em to go piss up a rope, they lose most of the news sources and readers start using someone else. One of the failing search sites will pay (because for them the cost will be mimimal.... at the time) and with luck become successful. Then they give all the profits to the news providers and become a.bomb and we repeat the cycle until they are all dead except Google who only derives a small income from banner ads on Google News. See online music P2pP sites become DRMed music providers and then die for a template.
Yes it is subject to keylogging. But on the upside if you have ssh and such setup right on the little guy all an attacker gets is your keystrokes in the apps you run, the only password would be the one you login to the thing with, which requires physical possession of the unit anyway. All of the remote systems would be accessed with crypto keys stored safely on the unit and never shared with the potentially tainted windows PC. Run all of the sessions via X or VNC sessions so the output is graphical and that will cut down on how much can be snooped.
Is it safe? No. Better than carrying around a USB key with Putty installed? Hell yes.
Even safer would be one of those little Nokia tablets and a WiFi or Bluetooth+phone connection and if you just had to have a full keyboard go with a foldup bluetooth model.
> I think the original poster was referring to the democratic party's 'machine' style politics of the 20's-40's. > intimidation, registering dead people, graft, ballot stuffing... all that stuff. wikipedia has an acceptable > article on the chicago democratic machine here.
Whitewash all ya want, truth is every case of actual vote fraud that changed the outcome of an election has been Democrats doing what comes natural to em; cheating.
You would be hard pressed these days to find a historian who would argue the case that Kennedy's win over Nixon was fair. The dead in Chicago tipped IL and don't even look into what went on in TX unless you have a very strong constituition.
Sen. Mary Landrieu of LA owes her seat to the dead in New Orleans, who were assisted to the polls by the Democratic machine. That was in the 1990s by the way.
Several recent elections in WA have been widely suspected of taint. Boxes of ballots 'appear' weeks after the election yet get counted despite zero audit trail or even pamper seals, and even worse abuse. But since Democrats ended up being elected nobody in the media cared to keep beating the drum until an investigation was conducted.
Remember also that even in the Democratic paranoid's wet dream case,the 2000 presidential election, while the press was obsessing over FL, buried on the back pages were much more damming cases of vote fraud in several other states, all involving Democrats. Bussing homeless people from one state (where victory was assured) to neighboring ones where every vote was needed, buying their votes with free smokes. Only a footnote in the history books. The Miami Herald along with all of the other major media outlets in FL recount the ballots and declare Bush won but Bush's coup in Florida is accepted fact in leftwing circles to this day.
> And I value jmorris42 (1458)'s time -- perhaps more than he does.
It doesn't take all that much time. Especially when buying quantity. I took two days to carefully pick out the hardware for our new patron lab and three of us spent a day chuncking stuff into the boxes after turning our boardroom into an assembly line for the day. In exchange for that labor we have three dozen quality systems that we are hoping to get four or five years out of. A year and a half in we have replaced a power supply (a case of crib death under warranty) and a couple of hard drives. We saved enough cash up front to justify the labor and if the reliability holds up like I'm planning we keep on winning. Plus we had zero Linux compatibility issues since all of the hardware was carefully researched for compatibility.
> One thing I've been telling people for a long time is that Macintosh computers last longer.
Not really. Yes if you compare a gold plated Apple with a piece of junk Dell Apple wins the reliability game. Buy better PCs and the reliability is about the same.
And if you are happy with what it shipped with you can keep right on running the OS that shipped on a PC for five plus years. Assuming you don't run anything that stresses your PC, much like you avoid stressing your Apple.
> I bought an Apple computer because I knew it was made by a top-tier manufacturer that supports its product > and because I wanted to run Apple's operating system which, I believe, is easier to use than Microsoft's.
And that is the only reason to buy an Apple. If you don't believe OS X is worth a 25-50% premium buy a PC and either live with Windows or try the penguin.
> That's $1000 more for the Dell than for the Mac Pro, not the other way around.
I still had a tab open on Dell.com and one on apple.com with similarly configured systems. Yes I didn't look closely enough at the Dell and managed to miss the 2nd proc. But even with it added in I had a Dell under $6K and the Mac a few dollars shy of $7,500. Assuming I didn't miss anything else, and I did run back over the list after getting called out once, that is a win for Dell in my book. Sorry, better luck next time. If you think OS X is $1,500 better than XP, Linux or BSD then by all means buy the Apple.
> some stores are running 98 on there pos systems.
Some stores as in Walmart is running Win98 on their new self check lanes. I saw it rebooting once and there was the Win98 splash screen. Couldn't freakimg believe it, Walmart is usually fairly tech savvy. Probably bought as a unit though and they had to take what the vendor shipped.
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> Agreed- and a good way to prove it would be to stop worrying about the stock market, profits,
> and low taxes for the rich
We have to worry about those things, especially in wartime. We need a strong economy to provide the resources to wage war.
> start confiscating technology to make war material
Eh? The government doesn't have to pay patent royalties anyway. They are allowed to use any available tech without asking. Remember that "Intellectual Property" is a fiction created by the MPAA and RIAA. Patents are just temporary monopolies granted by the government and they can ignore em.
> bring back the draft.
Don;t think that would help. This war isn't going to be won by lots of boots on the ground. If it does devolve into massed ranks of soldiers we are in deep poo poo.
> If this is truly the war between civilizations you, I, and apparently President Bush think it is, the
> economy is of little consequence in comparison to survival.
Economic power is power exactly like military or diplomatic power. Each can be leveraged to impose one's will on another. So as the world's superpower power in all three spheres we should be leveraging all three as needed.
> In WWII we ended the Nazi threat in a little under 4 years by devoting 125% of our GDP to the problem.
At what cost though. Millions dead, a continent in smoking ruin, two thermonuclear blasts, etc. And on a more practical note, a Europe so traumatized as to be easy pickings for the Communists leading directly into the Cold War. If we can succeed in Iraq and more importantly, here at home against the Democrats we can win the GWOT without some of those horrific costs. The alternative is a World War where the casualty rate could quickly top the billion mark.
Exactly like Chamberlin's apeasement of Germany lead directly to millions of graves and a ruined continent, allowing Democrats to stop us from dealing with this threat while it is still managable will end up costing untold lives in a few more years when Iran has the Bomb.
> If we did the same to Islamic Terrorism, I suspect this war could be over in a matter of weeks, with both
> Sunni and Shi'ites utterly destroyed, only leaving the much more moderate Sufi as the last Islamics.
Ok, just how far do you propose carrying your 'final crusade'? Just nuke em all? Clinton decimated our armed forces, claiming a "peace dividend". Or didn't you wonder how spending on domestic programs could rise and the budget still get balanced? We don't have enough troops and don't have the means of properly equiping and supplying them if we drafted a bunch of new boots to wipe out the middle east conventionally. Unless of course we went to a full War Economy but that would still take at least a year to rev up while the whole world watched and reacted.
The reason software sucks is too simple. Software sucks because we don't care. But that doens't give enough material for a whole book I guess.
Really though, it is just that simple. We know how to make software that is reliable and secure. What do people buy? There is your answer.
And now to make sure I piss off everyone lets go beyond just slagging Microsoft since that is like kicking cripples. Macs suck too. Same for Linux, and BSD. All have bugs exposed on an almost daily basis. Why? Because nobody cared enough.
Ok, so what is my solution? Not giving a rats rectum about Windows or Mac limit my rant to Linux (and a bit of BSD). Start with OpenBSD as they are the closest to getting it right. Sure there isn't much in BSD, but what IS there is as reliable as an organization their size can make it. Features be damned, make it work!
So why couldn't organizations which have more resources take that idea to it's logical conclusion? Look people, adding new features before the old ones work is pointless and leads to software that sucks. Step one should be to take the Linux Standard Base and freeze it. Audit the crap out of it for security flaws and close every single bug report. Eliminate every compiler warning. Then look at every package that isn't at 1.0 status and decide what is needed to call it done and then DO it. Then begin moving that line outward. For now the graphical desktop environments probably can't be frozen, but everything underneath can be.
This won't happen though, because NOBODY CARES.
What I want to know is why there would be a problem stuffing the US wire services and publications into this sifter? Where is the problem with the government READING published information? Goddamn political correctness run amok is the only reason I can think of. I swear, I want to see candidates running on a platform of "We aren't going to win the War to save civilization until the last Democrat is defeated. And a bunch of no balls having Republicans have to get the boot too." When I see such a candidate I'll not only vote for em, I'll give til it hurts and campaign for em.
Sounds extreme? No, call it "reality based". So long as more of our war efforts go into fighting off angle biting Democrats than fighting their (informal) foreign allies. Democrats want to equate Iraq == Vietnam every other day it seems, I agree. We won every battle in Vietnam but lost the war because the VC had enough votes in Congress and allies in the media. We win any military engagement in Iraq but are on the virge of losing the war because the terrorists understand how to fight the media war here. All they have to do is give the media a daily ration of blood and gore, they will do their part and splatter it on the TV, allowing the Democrats to carp and whine until we will eventually pull out. Then the terrorists and the Democrats win. The only way to avoid this fate is to realize this and wage constant and merciless war on the media and the Democrats. If the Republicans would grow a pair and get in their face each and every time the trason party opens their mouth the people would rally to their cause. Americans love winners and detest losers. Act like winners guys!
> A few reasons... the ring is kilometers long. Angling it at 30 degrees would force you to build it deep
> into the ground, high into the air, or both.
They are talking about a ring two clicks across. Radius = 1km, angle = 30o. Doesn't sound like an unsurmountable problem. Let it poke out of the ground 250meters and go 750 under. Or split the differnce and angle it at 15o going 250M above and 250M below ground, still makes for a more shallow turn at the end.
> The ability to change launch direction is probably more important than the complications it adds
> to the launch physics.
Probably true, unless it were only intended for launching supplies to a space station or something of that sort. But that alone could probably justify building such a launcher. Just have to come up with an easy way to catch the packages.
> You don't dump tons and tons of carbon into the atmosphere each time you launch,
Lot of good reasons this launcher is a good thing. Saving carbon emissions isn't one.
1) Considering the frequency of launches, trains, planes and automobiles spew out so much more that any quantity from rockets is lost in the noise.
2) Many rockets, like the main engines on the shuttle, burn hydrogen and are thus very clean. The SRBs do burn some nasty stuff and probably include some carbon among the waste products.
> Apparently DVD Jon is the fanatical open-source saviour some people seem to think.
I think he is attacking the problem in the weakest point. And remember, as someone currently living and working in the US publishing a removal program for FairPlay would be nothing but a one way trip to the joint.
Now look at what happens if he sells a program to add FairPlay DRM to a file. If Apple sues over it it will push the monopoly over content aspect right up in people's face.
If they don't sue, lots of new players jump into (read as sell FairPlay alongside PlaysForSure) the game and the iTunes store goes kaput. In a retailing fight for the music dollar between Apple and Walmart who is your money on? And while Apple is currently using the iTunes store as a loss leader to sell iPods and shut up the "piracy enabler' rants from the MPAA, longer term it is clear Apple does have intentions of being the 800lb gorilla of media distribution by pulling a Microsoft. (i.e. acquire a monopoly on playback hardware and leverage it into a monopoly on content distribution.)
Making the market for FairPlay a level (fair) playing field has lots of upside. No it doesn't solve the problem of DRM, but it will certainly screw with Steve's plans for world domination.
> 1. If you're mucking around with trademarks, get it in writing. Some guy at some organization posting something to a listserv
> does not necessarily represent a legally binding agreement.
Someone isn't too informed. Gerv wasn't 'some guy on a listserv' he had licensing@mozilla.org as a contact address. Silly me, thinking that would make him at least semi-official. I have communicated with him in the past... and have firefox partially converted to iceweasel in my RHEL rebuild project as a result. I did basically the same thing as Debian, replaced the visible name (RH already replaces the throbber) and left the name of the package and executable alone for compatibility with RHEL. Now I'm wondering if I'm now going to have "the conversation" with Moz Corp myself. You know the one.
"But we had a deal."
"I am changing the bargain. Pray I do not change it further."
> the FSF used to ask people not to name their non-GNU projects "GNU something"
Of course they have been trying to co-opt the whole Linux movement with their insane GNU/Linux insanity. Since Linux is most obviously NOT an official GNU project it is pretty obvious why they want to glom onto it; even if it is wrong to affix one trademark to another with only a punctuation mark to seperate them without permission from both parties.
> Lets see, you were attacked by Osama bin laden an ex CIA-associated Saudi by a group of mostly saudis with
> a paper trail of money linking more saudis who had a deep ideological hate for saddam hussan and who
> actively tried to kill each other... Logically it must then be Iraq that is reposnible? seem logical to me....
Classic case of missing the forest for the trees. I'll try one last time before moving to another article.
To win the GWOT we must drain the fever swamps in the Middle East that UBL feeds on for new idiots to strap a bomb onto. That means we need to transform the dysfunctional countries in the region into modern Republican forms of government with modern instituitions and economies. They won't be little clones of the US, Canada or Europe because they are Islamic peoples who will need to discover their own balance in much the same way our fledgling nations balanced their religious, philisophical and political beliefs.
Now once one accepts that this is the only longterm solution the obvious question is HOW? Well one way would be to invade and smash Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq, etc. and rebuild them all as was done at the end of WWII. Downside is that after Clinton 'spent the peace dividend' we lacked the militaty force to even consider something so grand. A less expensive and probably better way would be to build a model and allow the people in the others to emulate a successful example of their own free will.
Ok, we only invade one country... Next question is obviously WHICH one? As fate would have it there was one country centrally situated that we happened to still be in a formal state of War with, was generally a nightmare waiting to happen again and was about to slip out of the UN sanctions that were part of the Cease Fire agreement that stopped Gulf War I. Basically Saddam needed killin in a bad way regardless. I think the choice was pretty easy. What part of that line of reasoning do you have a problem with?
> Elect scientists and engineers!
Or lets not. I wouldn't hire an MD to design a building. I wouldn't hire a physist to give me a physical. I wouldn't hire a politician (even one I liked) to operate a particle accelerator. And I suspect nobody here finds any of these statements controversial. So why would we want to elect a scientist? If said scientist has been politically active and has positions on most of the issues of the day that I approve of then yes, I'll take a chance on letting him switch career tracks. Otherwise, nope.
The days of citizen legislators and the old Republic they served are long dead. Now we live in a semi socialist nanny state where the Feral Government runs every aspect of our daily lives. It isn't a job for amateurs anymore.
I wish it could be again, but wishing won't make it so. Doing that will require a long sustained effort to raise a new generation of Citizens willing to accept responsibility for their own affairs.
> There are two primary shooting wars going on.
Nope, only one.
> One is a game of terrorist whack-a-mole that is a sad necessity.
If we contented ourselves with playing whack-a-mole (another way of phrasing it would be treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem btw) we will never prevail. We have to end state sponsorship or terrorism AND we must remove the circumstances that breed terrorists.
> The other is a war we started. We went in under false pretences, overthrew a government that while bad was
> NEVER a real threat to us personally, and now must clean up the mess left behind.
No, Iraq IS the War on Terror. Afganistan was something that had to be cleaned up, but alone would not have ended the terrorists. It would have simply driven them elsewhere.... namely into Iran, Iraq, Syria and Somalia. Iraq would have slipped the sanctions by now (they had bribed almost everyone at the UN in charge of enforcing them, to the point they were largely meaningless at the time of the Iraq War) and been back in the business of being general villans.
But more importantly, Iraq was the perfect place to attempt to install a modern Republican form of government in the heart of the Middle East (otherwise known as the fever swamps breeding terrorism) to provide an example to the suffering masses living in tyranny. Iraq is the wedge that, if successful, bring down the House of Saud, the corrupt despot on the Egyptian throne, etc.
> Of course I have also had the insane idea that there should be an IQ test on every voter registration form.
> Miss the minimum and your ballot goes in the shredder instead of the box."
I'd love that idea. Most ignorant/stupid people vote Democratic. Accuse me of flamebaiting all ya want folks, it is the nasty little open secret nobody wants to talk about. When Democrats/Progressives/etc rail about stupid people voting the wrong way it is simply misdirection. They DEPEND on the stupid, the uneducated (i.e. increasingly anyone who goes to government schools) and the politically naive. And most importantly they absolutely depend on keeping as many voters as possible in total ignorance of economics.
And while I'm bound for -1 flamebait I'll toss another live grenade. Democrats depend on voters making decisions emotionally instead of rationally. Which explains why Democrats/Progressives did noticably better after Women's Sufferage. Anyone who doesn't believe me is invited to examine the historical record. No Democratic since that event would have won office had only men been voting. Of course modern women are finally reaching educational parity with men, and having had to deal with the real world most of their lives now, so sure enough the gender gap is slowly disappearing.
So now the bug push is to make up those losses and get illegal aliens voting, on the assumption they are mostly poor, uneducated and thus ripe for the Democratic party.
> > Most Republicans are living in the real world, where there is a shooting war on.
> Which they're doing their level best to lose in the most spectacular way possible.
All too true. But they are fighting. During the opening acts of WWII and the Cold War (WWIII) we didn't exactly cover ourselves in glory either. But we knew that defeat wasn't an option and kept going and eventually won. I'm still holding out hope the Republicans will keep swinging long enough to learn how to fight this new sort of war.
Winning requires internalizing the fundamental truth of modern warfare. Battles are won and lost on the battlefield, but the war is won on the floor of the Congress and on TV. Defeat Democrats and UBL will give up since his only hope for victory lies in destroying our will to fight. Democrats lend him moral support when they lead him to believe that one election tipping their way will give him victory in Iraq. I'm NOT saying all Democrats are knowingly in league with UBL. What I am saying is that UBL doesn't care because the result, for him, is the same regardless. And I'm sad to say no small portion of Democrats don't care if they give UBL a victory, their blind hatred of Bush and their insatable lust to regain lost political power is overwhelming all other considerations.
> Ah! That explains why so many Democrats were in favor of going into Afghanistan.
> (Check the congressional vote record if you don't believe me.)
Don't have to check, I was watching. Yes most Democrats voted to destroy the Taliban. As most of them voted to invade Iraq, and for the same reason. Voting otherwise would have been suicide for most of them. But from their public statements then and now it was clear that had they believed they could have been survived they would have voted against both.
Now of course every elected Democrat was 100% for Afganistan to prove they are 'serious about fighting terrorism' and obfuscate their anti-war fervor over Iraq. But I was there, watching TV and reading their ravings in newpaper columns and online. Afganistan would be a quagmire. Afganistan had resisted conquest by every major power since history began, we would suffer the fate of the British and the Russians. Afganistan was just a little pissant country Bushitler wanted to beat up to prove his manhood. You name it and some Democrat was saying it.... then.
> Iraq isn't about weapons of mass destruction! Where did you get a silly idea like that?
Where were you? War in Iraq was justified on any one of several equally valid causus beli.
1. Iraq's failure to comply with ANY of the terms of the cease fire agreement. Yes, cease fire and not peace treaty. The US (and the coalition) were still in a formal state of War with Iraq and would have remained so until they complied with their end of the terms in the cease fire. They had a free pass during the Clinton years but a new sheriff was in town. Bush was itching to resolve Iraq from inuraguation day and should have been.
2. Iraq was both a short term and longterm threat to the region. Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism. No, there has been no credible evidence linking Saddam and 9/11 however 9/11 is not the sole focus of the GWOT. ANY terrorist is an enemy, not just Al-Qaida; the whole IDEA of terrorism (wanton attacks against civilian targets intended to terrify populations into surrender) as a legitimate tool of statecraft is being fought to extermination. Iraq was the home to several notorious terrorists, including ones who had launched massive attacks on US interests and citizens. Iraq was active in training and financing terrorist organizations worldwide. Iraq paid bounties to the families of homocide bombers.
Iraq had started wars in the past and showed every indication of a willingness to do so in the future as soon as the sanctions were lifted. Which from his corruption of the UN would have been soon.
3. Every intelligence agency on earth believed Iraq had an active WMD pr
> The solution hasn't exclusively been to polarize them on the issues, but to say "if you
> vote for the other guy, wolves will attack you"
And the problem for the other side is that the Republicans CAN say that and it resonates because most rational people understand there is more than just a little truth in the charge. I'm one of those voters who would love to vote against the 'spend tax money like drunken sailors' Republican party and the 'compasionate conservative liberal lite' Republican party personified by G. W. Bush. But a vote for a Democrat IS a vote for wolves eating me so I will hold my nose and go vote a straight Republican ticket in November.
I know it, you know it and UBL knows it. This is the first 'faith based war' in that one of the major political parties has decided that if they all hold hands and sing kumbya and BELIEVE real hard that the war doesn't exist that it won't exist. But reality is that which continues to exist regardless how hard one disbelieves it, and the reality is that the War will exist until both sides decide it is over, and UBL has been winning battles against the infidel since the '80s when he went up against the Soviets so it will take more than the minor setbacks we have inflicted so far to convince him and his minions to lay down arms.
Most Republicans are living in the real world, where there is a shooting war on. Most Democrats are living in a fantasy world where they are more likely to believe Bushitler blew up the WTC than to believe UBL not only did it, but that it wasn't his first successful attack. The only Democrats on the national stage who show they at least understand are Lieberman (forced from his party for his belief) and perhaps HRC, who probably understands we have a war on but is politically savvy enough to fuzz her position enough to remain viable in her insane party. Making her morally bankrupt and unfit for office regardless of which side you look at the issue from.
> These claims of warmest in a million years are hogwash as are claims that humans cause it all.
Perhaps. The problem is I'm NOT a scientist but I am a Citizen of the USA and am expected to influence my government through the use of the franchise. So my problem is whether to trust these people putting themselves out as experts. When they make statements like "warmest in a million years" that I know to be false, and are obvioulsly false to anyone with half a clue, I find it very hard to believe their assertion that "humans cause global warming" even if I cannot personally find flaws in their reasoning or data supporting that part.
Because if they ARE lying it is all too easy to cook the data to fit an agenda and there is quite a bit of evidence to support the notion that they DO have an agenda. The question of global warming and whether/how much of it is caused by human activity has become so politicized, finding impartial facts on the subject debated by rational people is simply no longer possible. Much like the rest of political discussion in this polarized environment.
What disinclines me to trust the Global Warming crowd is the astonishing degree of overlap between those who push the theory and those who have adopted what I consider the 'wrong' side of the rest of the political debate. I.e. to a very high degree of correlation those who support Global Warming support the socialist/pro terrorist side while almost every skeptic is also pulling for Western Civilization and the values of the Enlightenment.
Thankfully this overly politicized situation probably can't last much longer, one way or the other it is going to sort itself out. Either our civilization will fall into a new dark age of fanaticism or the good guys will finally grow a pair, civilization will renew itself, telling the moonbats to STFU and generally clean house among the barbarians, and we will all (meaning the whole human race) enter a new Golden Age.
And with either outcome, Global Warming (assuming it is caused by humans) will be a solved problem. If civilization falls the world population will drop along with industry, thus solving the problem. If by some miracle we pull it out solving a small problem like CO2 emissions will likely be trivial.
> Ever wonder How fast a normal climate change occurs ?
Mammoths have been discovered frozen with green plants still in their mouths. Bam! Glaciers. Of course Bushitler probably wasn't responsible for that so who cares, right?
> It all depends on which agenda they're pushing, or who's funding them.
And even if accurate, facts are usually pretty easy to abuse into supporting a political position.
Consider. These guys want you to believe the Earth is at unprecedented highs, thus we MUST panic and DO something. Something usually being defined as harmful to Western Civilization. Note that Kyoto would only limit CO2 emmissions from advanced Western nations yet allow China and the 3rd world to spew unlimited amounts of the stuff.
Now consider the unescapable fact that the Earth HAS been hotter in the past, despite the FUD coming from the enviro political hacks. Greenland wasn't given that name as some sort of horrible joke. It used to be GREEN. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth it is thought to have been much warmer than today. Note also the evidence of melting polar caps on Mars, something unlikely to be caused by humans.
Fact #1: The biggest influence on global climate is a big semi stable fusion reactor that has only been studied in detail for a fairly short period of time but is already known to vary its output on multiple cycles measured in years. Several studies indicate solar output is currently increasing.
Fact #2: More and more evidence points to Earth getting warmer.
If you are a green who secretly yearns to eliminate humanity (or at least Western Civilization's share of humanity) because of our 'raping of the earth' you leap on global warming as a way to scare people into surrendering their technological civilization, thus making it easier to achieve your goal of if not 'killing all humans', at least allowing war, pestilence and famine to thin the herd 90%. Sane people notice the earth getting warmer, Mars getting warmer and the sun shining a little brighter and connecting the dots, figure it is natural. But if it gets bad enough to interfere with our lifestyle we will do something about it. Shouldn't be all that hard.
> > Imagine the electrical feeder line that will be needed going into the station.
> You mean that single 20 ga wire?
No. Power is Volts X Amps (X power factor if we are using AC but lets keep it simple, K?) Wire guage sets a practical limit to Amps and Volts is limited as well by other physical limits. Recharging in 5 minutes needs megawatt hours of energy delivered in minutes. Doing that means a crapload of both volts and amps.
> Likewise the power pump station will have a mini substation getting transmission voltage and stepping
> it down to something around the distribution voltage range (maybe even lower).
No, a largish filling station will need a major substation. And the cable going into your car will be a big thick cable; a pair of large fairly rigid conductor with several redundant layers of insulation over them, probably with sensors buried in the insulation to shut the system down at the first hint of a weak spot.
> $9 is a huge amount of electricity in term of charge. passing that through a line in 5 minutes
> is gonna take one HUGE ass line..
Worse. Imagine a 'gas station' of the future with a dozen 'pumps' hammering away. Imagine the electrical feeder line that will be needed going into the station. Now imagine a city, where 'gas stations' are usually on at least one, perhaps two corners of any major intersection. Now imagine one out on a lonely stretch of Interstate. All hammering away at the electrical grid by the Gigawatt/hour. Where do we get all that additional electricity? With all the major upgrading of infrastructure, increase in power station fuel costs, etc. required I wouldn't expect electric rates to remain constant, that $9 will become $50 by the time it moves from early adopter status to mainstream.... and any remaining savings on the gas bill will be more than offset by the higher electric bill.
If we start a major program of building nuke plants NOW we might be able to get ahead of the demand curve but we will still be looking at a major upgrade of the distribution grid. Everybody will have a megavolt line running through their neighborhood.
> Moral, as always: don't get greedy.
You took the wrong lesson. The true moral is to BE greedy. Greed is about grabbing all the loot you can, but does not require being stupid about it. Doing something that will hurt your haul isn't greedy, it is stupid. Which is why enlightened self interest is the best way to go. When you dig down far enough almost everything immoral is also stupid.
The premise of the submitter only holds if ALL of the search engines hang tough. If only Google tells em to go piss up a rope, they lose most of the news sources and readers start using someone else. One of the failing search sites will pay (because for them the cost will be mimimal.... at the time) and with luck become successful. Then they give all the profits to the news providers and become a .bomb and we repeat the cycle until they are all dead except Google who only derives a small income from banner ads on Google News. See online music P2pP sites become DRMed music providers and then die for a template.
Yes it is subject to keylogging. But on the upside if you have ssh and such setup right on the little guy all an attacker gets is your keystrokes in the apps you run, the only password would be the one you login to the thing with, which requires physical possession of the unit anyway. All of the remote systems would be accessed with crypto keys stored safely on the unit and never shared with the potentially tainted windows PC. Run all of the sessions via X or VNC sessions so the output is graphical and that will cut down on how much can be snooped.
Is it safe? No. Better than carrying around a USB key with Putty installed? Hell yes.
Even safer would be one of those little Nokia tablets and a WiFi or Bluetooth+phone connection and if you just had to have a full keyboard go with a foldup bluetooth model.
> I think the original poster was referring to the democratic party's 'machine' style politics of the 20's-40's.
> intimidation, registering dead people, graft, ballot stuffing... all that stuff. wikipedia has an acceptable
> article on the chicago democratic machine here.
Whitewash all ya want, truth is every case of actual vote fraud that changed the outcome of an election has been Democrats doing what comes natural to em; cheating.
You would be hard pressed these days to find a historian who would argue the case that Kennedy's win over Nixon was fair. The dead in Chicago tipped IL and don't even look into what went on in TX unless you have a very strong constituition.
Sen. Mary Landrieu of LA owes her seat to the dead in New Orleans, who were assisted to the polls by the Democratic machine. That was in the 1990s by the way.
Several recent elections in WA have been widely suspected of taint. Boxes of ballots 'appear' weeks after the election yet get counted despite zero audit trail or even pamper seals, and even worse abuse. But since Democrats ended up being elected nobody in the media cared to keep beating the drum until an investigation was conducted.
Remember also that even in the Democratic paranoid's wet dream case,the 2000 presidential election, while the press was obsessing over FL, buried on the back pages were much more damming cases of vote fraud in several other states, all involving Democrats. Bussing homeless people from one state (where victory was assured) to neighboring ones where every vote was needed, buying their votes with free smokes. Only a footnote in the history books. The Miami Herald along with all of the other major media outlets in FL recount the ballots and declare Bush won but Bush's coup in Florida is accepted fact in leftwing circles to this day.
> And I value jmorris42 (1458)'s time -- perhaps more than he does.
It doesn't take all that much time. Especially when buying quantity. I took two days to carefully pick out the hardware for our new patron lab and three of us spent a day chuncking stuff into the boxes after turning our boardroom into an assembly line for the day. In exchange for that labor we have three dozen quality systems that we are hoping to get four or five years out of. A year and a half in we have replaced a power supply (a case of crib death under warranty) and a couple of hard drives. We saved enough cash up front to justify the labor and if the reliability holds up like I'm planning we keep on winning. Plus we had zero Linux compatibility issues since all of the hardware was carefully researched for compatibility.
> One thing I've been telling people for a long time is that Macintosh computers last longer.
Not really. Yes if you compare a gold plated Apple with a piece of junk Dell Apple wins the reliability game. Buy better PCs and the reliability is about the same.
And if you are happy with what it shipped with you can keep right on running the OS that shipped on a PC for five plus years. Assuming you don't run anything that stresses your PC, much like you avoid stressing your Apple.
> I bought an Apple computer because I knew it was made by a top-tier manufacturer that supports its product
> and because I wanted to run Apple's operating system which, I believe, is easier to use than Microsoft's.
And that is the only reason to buy an Apple. If you don't believe OS X is worth a 25-50% premium buy a PC and either live with Windows or try the penguin.
> That's $1000 more for the Dell than for the Mac Pro, not the other way around.
I still had a tab open on Dell.com and one on apple.com with similarly configured systems. Yes I didn't look closely enough at the Dell and managed to miss the 2nd proc. But even with it added in I had a Dell under $6K and the Mac a few dollars shy of $7,500. Assuming I didn't miss anything else, and I did run back over the list after getting called out once, that is a win for Dell in my book. Sorry, better luck next time. If you think OS X is $1,500 better than XP, Linux or BSD then by all means buy the Apple.
> some stores are running 98 on there pos systems.
Some stores as in Walmart is running Win98 on their new self check lanes. I saw it rebooting once and there was the Win98 splash screen. Couldn't freakimg believe it, Walmart is usually fairly tech savvy. Probably bought as a unit though and they had to take what the vendor shipped.