> Pickens is putting his money where his mouth is and at the same time > helping America, that is a true Capitalist and a Patriot.
Sounded like that when I first heard of this... but I actually dig a little before jumping into supporting something. Check his WSJ piece of July 8 and these two quotes from adjacent paragraphs no less:
Quote #1
"It will be accomplished solely through private investment with no new consumer or corporate taxes or government regulation."
Quote #2
"The future begins as soon as Congress and the president act. The government must mandate the formation of wind and solar transmission corridors, and renew the subsidies for economic and alternative energy development in areas where the wind and sun are abundant."
Eh? Sounds like another corporate welfare client trying to get his grubby hands into my pocket.
If wind were really economical he wouldn't need subsidies and wouldn't be waiting on Congress to quit masturbating and do something.
News flash: Democrats LOVE these high gas prices, sure they wish the extra money were flowing into the Treasury instead of OPEC but they still can't work up any real displeasure at something that pushes their agenda so well. So why are they going to act?
Screw the hippie crap with wind, solar, etc., we are outta time. Build nuke plants. Not in twenty years, not in ten. I want a plan to have enough nuke plants online inside of five years to make electricity cheap enough to change the economics in favor of plug in electrics. We have the tech to build a safe nuke plant now, waste disposal is still an issue but we have time to work on that problem if we can avoid western civilization collapsing. And eventually I'm sure we will perfect the greener alternative energy sources and not need so many nuke plants... or we get finally solve fusion and quit worrying about energy.
> There's more plot and more stuff happens in those Verne novels..
Well if it's fast plotting grab the first few of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian books. Written as serials they tend to jump from one cliffhanger to another. While I enjoyed em, they did had a high cheese quotient when I read em a generation ago, not sure they would pass the smell test today. The later sequels should be passed over at any rate.
And the Heinlein juvi novels should be on anyone's short list. Starship Troopers and Moon is a Harsh Mistress should probably be held back until the mid teens at the earliest. Some of his later stuff is R rated at best.
> but they shouldn't be allowed to practice biological science.
Why? Just general religious bigotry on your part or is there some reasoning behind your proposed ban? Granted there are some areas of biological research where they might have some trouble but the field is pretty big. And a lot of so called 'evolution deniers' are in various grey areas. For example, if someone believes that species change over time but that the heap big skyfather is who kickstarted life instead of spontanious random genesis they can probably do 99.9% of what is currently done in biology with zero problems.
Sounds like you just want to supress any disenting views from your chosen religion. And yes secular humanism IS a religion in that it attempts to provide an all encompasing Theory to explain Life, the Universe and Everything complete with a moral code, which is why I'm an agnostic.
I suspect science might eventually explain the universe but it damned sure isn't close today. Science, logic and pure reason are currently poor tools to develop a moral code from, just as an example. Science is good at describing the universe, or the What part. Answering Why, not so good. And since pretty much by definition any attempt to ask about the universe pre big bang isn't science it is a poor tool to ask some of the really big questions of.... at least as we currently understand physics.
> If -I- were to taser you for noncompliance, I go to jail, because of > my lack of a State Authorized shiny piece of tin on my chest.
One definition of 'government' is that it is the entity which claims a monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of force. Something to keep in mind when considering giving it additional authority, especially if the task can possibly be done by a private entity.
But thankfully our form of government (US) doesn't give a monopoly on teh use of force to the State. You CAN tase a bro if he is attempting to use force against you and in most jurisdictions (i.e those that are lawless) you will not be punished. The 2nd Amendment was recently affirmed to protect an individual right to the possession, bearing and yes the lawful use thereof. Our government gets it's powers from We the People and thus in theory doesn't any powers we didn't have to give it and we kept a generous portion.
> You realise that all the OS layers, networking layers, web browsers, > scripting languages are primarily to try to get away from C?
So? You are missing the bigger point. All of those layers and scripting languages you speak of are written in C. So C working in Flash means all of that other stuff can be brought over. Perl + Flash? Python + Flash? Ruby? The mind boggles at the possibilities.
Of course since nobody will want to stuff all of Perl + half of CPAN down the pipe every time an applet loads we will end up with predownloaded versions cached for use. Let the package war begin, will flash binary packages be maintained with.deb or.rpm... I can see Windows users fighting Package Kit or Synaptic to manage the cruft needed so that "web apps" can work. We could end up with an entire GNU/Flash[1] distribution lurking on every Windows PC.
[1] I object to the GNU/Linux misnaming abomination but this time it really will be a "GNU" distribution since Linux won't be involved. At least until we get a formal 'distribution' being shipped by Adobe.
But you are supporting him? Does the phrase 'cult of personality' ring any bells? But anyway, since you appear to be one of the saner ones posting herelet me ask a question.
Can you name a single (or several!) accomplishment of Senator Obama that marks him out as deserving of the highest office in the land? Note that I'm looking for something especially noteworthy, not just getting elected to the Senate (after knocking out all viable challengers before the first ballot was cast) or making a couple of nice speeches, if those things make Presidential material we have hundreds of eligible candidates.
I loath Sen McCain, McCain Feingold vs the 1st Amendment, McAmnesty, etc., but he HAS done things. Even things that can only be 'bipartisan' in that both sides have hated his guts at various times for them.
> As such, I CAN NOT vote for him.
I'm having the same problem in reverse, although Obambi is really making me want to vate for McCain, right now I'm still stuck waiting for him to answer what part of "Congress shall make no law..." is beyond his english comprehension abilities.
> They are the ones that have ran up monster deficits, invaded > countries for no reason literally
Could you stop the McCain == Bush talking points for a moment? 'They' didn't do anything of the sort, McCain has been a budget hawk since forever, voting against the rest of the Repubs when they were spending like drunken sailors.
And I find your use of the plural revealing. Only the most diehard kostards think Afganistan didn't need an enema so what country other than Iraq are you thinking of? And Iraq needed invading for any of a dozen sound reasons, not least of which being that we were still formally at war and Saddam had been flaunting the cease fire terms for a decade. And since every intelligence agency in the free world believed Saddam had WMD and was planning on more as soon as he got out from under the mostly toothless UN sanctions it is totally unfair to condemn Bush for believing the same intelligence Hillary Clinton was reading when she voted for the war.
> and are so incompetent that when given the best military of the > world AND the best advice from said military STILL botches it by > believing that they are more intelligent.
Eh? I do believe it was McCain who was so critical of the administration policy in Iraq it made him a pariah in his own party... until Bush finally took his advice and things turned around.
Look, there are plenty of reasons NOT to like McCain, starting with his bipartisanship, but his positions on Iraq aren't among them as they have been spot on.
> Oh and I'm still bummed about the study the government is doing > to make sure solar is environmentally friendly.
I think you are missing the entire point of the enviromental movement. Not your fault really since their stated goals are misinformation. They TALK about alterantive energy. But spot the recurring pattern in what they actually DO.
Solar? As you observed, the second anyone actually tries to get licensed for a large scale installation the whinging about some poor snail (frog, bird, etc) that is only distinguishable from the zillions of others that look like it by trained experts starts.
Windmills? Nah, the objections have already started. Give it a few years and precisely nowhere will be suitable for new ones. Windmills are unsightly and kill birds.
Water? Just try building a new dam and watch how fast the enviros object. Beaver dams to serve the purposes of beavers are wonders of nature. Human dams to serve the needs of humans are a blight on Gaia. Plus most of the best spots were aready in use before the green movement even started, so not much potential to grow anyway. Ok, how about water in the form of tidal energy? Nope, not unless you could provide an absolute promise that no living thing which swims in the sea could possibly be caught in one or even inconvienced.
Biofuels? As soon as we started actually producing in quantity the wailing is in full cry from every quarter. And corn is just a political boondoggle anyway. If Iowa lost it's 'First in the Nation' status in the Presidential primaries the whole stupid thing would be quickly forgotten. Fuel from other biomass has techical potential but probably won't survive the green politics.
Ok, how about geothermal then! Nope, they are already whining about that and we haven't actually deployed very much yet.
And of course the Big N is off the table, even suggesting it is enough to get the founder of Greenpeace thrown out of the enviromental movement.
> do you see a conflict of interest in wine not directly supporting > MSOffice 2K at the gold level?
I want to use your excellect question as a springboard to expand to a broader question about the relationship between Codeweavers, Crossover Office and Wine.
I realize Crossover is what keeps you guys fed, clothed, etc. and more importantly for us users, adding code to the Wine repo. But there appear to be some downsides as well.
For example, take the original poster's question. CX has supported various versions of Office since the first release (since you actually managed to sell copies it is safe to assume the first release would run a version of Office well enough to have happy customers) but Wine isn't known to reliably run ANY version of Office with anything that would be called reliability. Is this something that will always be true, to drive sales of CX? Would outside contributions that removed these limitations from Wine even be merged?
More importantly than these specific questions, these issues and boundaries between Wine and CX aren't clearly spelled out. This becomes even more important now that Codeweavers is expanding the commercial product line into a game oriented product. We all realize Cedega is a bunch of leeches and probably won't ever be contributing anything of value back to Wine but if Codeweavers (meaning 'yall) also stop putting major functionality back into Wine or worse declining to merge competing versions...... Lots of questions, few answers.
But the biggest question I can come up with is this one. What would be the point of me (me taken as generic) considering looking at Wine with an eye to contributing unless I am first a Crossover Office customer? Because the odds are good that any particular missing feature in Wine is already implemented in CX, so one would first want to test there to avoid reinventing a wheel that probably wouldn't get merged anyway. So logically it is hard to see a motivation to contribute to Wine directly, and contributing to CX as an unpaid volunteer doesn't exactly give most free software devels a warm fuzzy feeling.
Mixed Free/Closed models are always a tricky balancing act. Clearly laying out what apps will be permitted to run under Wine and which will be reserved for CX would help people see where that line is going to be drawn.
> Can you please, please, please, get Alpha Centauri working!
Scrounge around places like eBay for the Loki Games port. Yes you have to google up some hints to get it running on the latest distros because libraries it depends on aren't installed by default anymore, but it can be done.
In the current model, Nvidia and ATI (now AMD) are the stars of the show. Gamers upgrade their video card at least anually, and now they often buy a pair to run SLI. The CPU is less important. Despite their efforts to force game devels to adopt multi-threaded game engines the uptake hasn't been what they need to drive sales of newer multi-core chips.
Move the heavy grunt of graphics from the GPU to the Intel Inside, so that gamers must have that octocore CPU and even better a pair of em and make em get wood over the rumored sixteen core chips and hang out at tech rumor websites to get the latest dope on em and Intel is back in charge of the PC world again.
Yes there are techincal issues, but those don't matter, this is a tech war between the chip vendors. AMD owning ATI makes things interesting, who knows how that will play out in the end, did they buy a GPU maker just as the GPU is dying? Do they have a PLAN that will make Intel the underdog again for a few years of catching up? Stay tuned.
> For example, Disney will have to pay for disney.fun
No they won't. They will buy disney and within six months traffic to.com,.org,.net,.anything will be darned near zero as usage of the AOL keyword version of the Internet becomes the new norm. Periods in URLS will be for losers who can't afford 'real' Internet names and nobody will think a Disney site would be on an old legacy domain as anything other than a redirector for someone using old ad copy.
It's worse. What they are proposing is nothing less than the total elimination of the current DNS and replacing it with AOL keywords. And raising the price a hundredfold while they are at it. And making sure it stays centralized under ICANN's control by cutting out the national registrars.
Within six months of going live.com will be but a memory as every entity with enough budget to buy bandwidth to actually run a server on buys their own TLD, or keyword. Ford.com becomes ford. google.com becomes google, mail.google.com probably becomes googlemail or mail.google, assuming they don't just outbid every other webmail company and just have 'email' or 'mail.' Just send to userid@email.
And domains will all be to the highest bidder with ICANN getting the money instead of domain squatters. Old legacy domains will be taken as a sign of a cheap bastard who can't afford a 'real' name.
> No no no no. Burn it 9 times, with three different brands of media > on three different burners.
That is proably overkill for anything but the most important of documents, and for those something more durable than DVD is probably called for.
However I do make it a habit to burn important things like photos to two discs. I make sure each disc is a different brand and then store them seperately. Manufacturers do vary among each other and over time. I don't want to lose as much as a year of photos because a plant had a bad batch. And storing them seperate gives some protection against storage problems. One set is in a cheap little photo album looking CD storage thingy and the other set is in normal in DVD cases.
And I don't use bulk media for long term storage. I try to stick to name brands, and Memorex isn't a real brand. Cheap media is of course perfect for most use.
> Well, I sasked your door permission to open by turning the handle, > and when it did, since it was unlocked, I entered your house while > you were gone today.
Bad analogy. Better would be I knocked on your door and a lady opened the door and said "Hi." So I asked if I could borrow the phone to call AAA and arrange for a tow. And she said "OK." Turns out she was just the maid and the homeowner got all freaked out for some reason when they found us in the bedroom getting our freak on.
Your AP is acting as your agent in this transaction, when I ask it for a 'cup 'o bandwidth' and it says "Sure, have some." it isn't my fault if you later don't think I should have been using your network. Tell your AP not to give your stuff away to strangers. If somebody tricks it they have crossed the line and should be punished, but you can't put people in jail for politely asking for permission and taking Yes for an answer.
> Are there really game developers out there who really think DX10 > is the way to go instead of OpenGL at this point?
Doesn't matter. Microsoft sells the publishers and they tell the developers what to do. And when logic and reason fail they pay em to develop to DX and if even that doesn't work threats usually do the trick. Besides. it makes the Xbox port so much easier if you use DX.
> For that matter, are there really game developers out there who > still consider Windows the only viable gaming platform in the > long term..
No, most seem to be leaving for the consoles. Getting the few left on Windows to take the hit on development time and performance to use multi-platform libs is hard. Especially in view of the above mentioned incentives to tie the title to Windows APIs.
If you are developing in PHP I'd guess your app is a pretty simple graphical app and doesn't have hooks into the OS, especially if it runs in Wine. So packaging a native Linux version should not be a problem.
Step one, create a generic RPM with as few dependencies as possible. If the size isn't totally insane just static link the sucker. Put it in a yum repo on your site along with a repo package. Give users instructions on how to add in the repo. Now you get to automagically upgrade them as you release new versions and with a little effort you can cover all yum/rpm distros. rpm based distros without yum can still manually install the rpm.
You can stop there if you like since.deb based systems always include the ability to install an rpm via alien/etc. since the LSB mandates rpm package support. But a little more effort would get you a Debian package in a repo so Debian/Ubuntu users get the automagic update love also.
So that should cover Fedora, RHEL & clones, SUSE, Debian plus Ubuntu & it's growing offspring and thus cover 90% of real world users. Toss in a tarball for anybody who might complain they were left out.
The Windows Installshield way only looks easier, long term it is a nightmare because it doesn't provide for auto updates so everybody gets to reinvent that wheel.
> It's one thing to claim that their car doesn't work, it's another > to claim it doesn't work because what it proposes to do is impossible.
Conservation of Energy says that what they are claiming is impossible. Water simply cannot be the fuel source for a hydrogen fueled energy source. When you burn (i.e. oxidize) hydrogen you get water as the result. Since no machine yet devised by man is 100% efficient the machine can't even sit and spin, to say nothing of produce enough excess energy to move a vehicle.
What they are claiming is more fantastic than a perpetual motion machine and the Patent Office stopped bothering to examine perpetual motion applications decades ago. Used to be every generation of half educated 'scientists' would learn just enough about magnets to get convinced there just 'had' to be an arrangement of them that would create perpetual motion, totally ignoring conservation of energy. Now the fetish seems to be moving to the water -> hydrogen + oxygen -> water cycle.
Now the claims of some in this thread that they are actually getting the energy from an Aluminum + water -> hydrogen + ? reaction is possible, but that isn't what they are claiming. And if they did it would be an Aluminum powered vehicle and we would be asking how many miles per pound it gets.
I used to fear that would be true, and many would pronounce it as flatly as you just did only a year or two ago. But you are now the exception.
DRM is pretty much dead on music these days. DVD has been totally cracked for years now and the sky hasn't fallen, DVD sales are still good. The defunct HD-DVD was already cracked and BD's first line of defense has already fallen. It is only a matter of time before the advanced crypto falls. And it won't kill HD content sales when it happens. Eventually the fear, uncertainty and doubt in Hollywood will meet reality.
The cell phone industry is going to take a bit longer, especially with the government mixed up in things. But I'm betting DRM gets pushed back to the SIM within a decade. You can't really open up that lowest layer of the stack without rethinking the entire worldwide phone network so that will probably be with us a bit longer.
> Future versions of windows will be locked to signed drm executables > as well and its the wave of the future.
Had Microsoft been able to force TCPA into Vista they probably would indeed been able to put us all into an X-Box Hell forever. But their window of opportunity has probably closed forever. By the time Windows 7 ships they aren't likely to have a monopoly anymore. Dominant, yes. Monopoly that can dictate who can and cannot sell software for Windows and demand a 'taste' of every sale X-Box style, no. Apple and ASUS have pretty much settled that question.
> What kind of experience? Has either Sen. McCain or Sen. Obama > ever been a governor?
How about experience on the national stage in general. Experience with national politics and foreign affairs. Had Obama had a little he wouldn't have made that stupid comment about meeting dictators with no preconditions just because some fatuous twat on YouTube got picked by CNN. He has been trying to spin his way out of a problem for months that an experienced candidate would never have gotten himself into.
How about some actual policies? Clinton ran on Change, Carter ran on Change. The new and improved Hope and Change is getting old, how about some actual policy recommendations that aren't warmed over Marxism.
As opposed to McCains kill terrosists first, THEN we can have Socialism.
Bah!
> I thought Obama was the candidate who stopped taking money > from lobbyists and PACs.
You are supposed to believe that. So he takes the money from the members of the PAC instead of the PAC, which if course makes it all right. And he brags that he doesn't accept money from corporations, implying that his opponents do... one problem, it's illegal for corporations to contribute. But he takes plenty from rich CEOs and high officials of corporations, as do his opponents.
Sorry, your Messiah is just another crooked Chicago Democrat. He just reads a teleprompter better than Mayor Daley.
That was the problem, at least this cycle. McCain won more by default than by winning. With no conservative in the race he just walked into the nomination.
Romney? Nah, MA liberal posing as a conservative Fred! Threw red meat.... then when he finally got in nothing Huck? Not a conservative. Prolife liberal tried to cover with Fairtax support Brownback? Who? Never got above the noise floor. Bad in the debates. Hunter? Who? Never got above the noise floor. Add Coulter liked him. Tancredo? I'm conservative and he scared me with his crazy Paul? Not a conservative, an idiotarian libertarian Rudy Republican for NY, never had a chance elsewhere
> McCain has compromised his position of integrity with both parties > to the point where no one can really trust him.
Not really, he hasn't been a conservative and barely a Republican since he got the itch to run for POTUS in 2000 so there isn't much trust to lose on our side. But he hasn't met a Democrat he wasn't ready to 'compromise' with yet. And of course compromise is here used in the Democrat sense where it is defined by a Republican agreeing with the Democrat, thus proving he/she has 'grown.'
McCain is basically Joe Leiberman with an R after his name. A non-idiotarian on foreign policy but a typical tax, spend and regulate Dem on pretty much everything else.
Add me to the list. I just sent the Party a letter telling them to save their postage on me because there ain't a chance in Hell of me sending them money this year. But I did invite them to keep my name on their lists in the hope that next time they wouldn't nominate someone who is a menace to our form of government.
I watched McCain blow off criticism of his McCain/Fiengold abomination by saying "People out in the country don't care about that, they never ask me about it." Well that is only because the only time the bastard enters my State it is to Karma Whore in New Orleans and I'm just not up to driving five hours to perhaps get a chance to ask the fool "English, Motherfucker! Do you speak it? 'What part of Congress shall make no law' goes over your pointed head?" (And get promptly escourted out by security.)
Seriously, I EXPECT Democrats to wipe their asses on the Constituition. They at least have the excuse that they don't pretend to believe in our form of government so they are at least being consistent. After all, that's the heart of the Change they Believe in, finishing the job of replacing our republican form of government with a Marxist Workers' Paridise.
Between now and election day Obama is likely to piss me off badly enough that I'll vote against him but if McCain thinks I support him just because he pretends to be a Republican he better think again. With luck I will just leave the top of the ballot blank and concentrate on electing a conservative Rep (we have two good ones running to replace the returing one) and ousting a bad Dem Senator for an OK Republican convert.
>..remember when I was a kid my mother didn't have to work..
Blame the feminists for that one. When women were not expected to work the whole system was 'play balanced' to allow a single wage earner to win the game of life. Then the feminists, especially after WWII, rewrote life's rules. Women went into the work force in droves and for a while those two income families had an advantage over their single wage earning peers. But the iron laws of economics being what they are, things quickly adapted. Our expectations of what defined 'the good life' scaled up so that two income families were then the norm and unless the single wage earner had a really good job they would be at the bottom of the pile.
Take another look at the other statistoc you cite. Your father's house cost 3X his annual wage, yours cost 6X. If your wife were in the labor force your house would cost closer to 3X your family income, i.e. no significant change. If there were a demand for them I suspect you could buy houses at 3X your income... that were as bad as the one you grew up in; no central air, crappy or no insulation, single pane glass, a lot fewer square feet on a smaller plot, at best a one car garage, etc.
Before I get flamed, nobody should take what I wrote as an argument that women should not have entered the workforce, that they should be home baking cookies or any of that. What I am saying is that nothing comes without a price, including even liberty.
> The judgement quoted the 1958 ICRC commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention:
One small problem. I can't find any evidence the US signed the Fourth Geneva Convention. The first three were sane, the later attempts were Soviet efforts to extend legal protection to their various 'revolutionary' movements around the world and tie the hands of the West in dealing with the problem.
So while Yugoslavia, being a Soviet client state at the time, signed and was subject to it, we didn't and aren't.
But ultimately, in the case you speak of, insurgents, International law can go screw itself. If a revolution breaks out here I'd expect the government to deal with it pretty much however it wished as a purely internal matter outside the scope of Internalional Law, subject only to the lawful control of US instituitions like Congress or our own Courts.
> Yes our president is an idiot. I'm saddened both that I voted for > him and that I'd do it again.
Ain't it the painful truth? Put Shrub on a ballot with the two losers we must pick from and I'd push his button. Even though he bungled the war, and McCain WAS right on that point and the need for more troops. Even though he was for McAmnesty and signed (foolishly believing the Supremes would do the right thing and ask McCain what part of "Congress shall make no law..." he was missing) McCain Feingold. Even though he was the asshole responsible for the Prescription Drug fiasco and bungled Social Security reform so badly it will likely be another generation before anybody else dares try again.
> It may be useful to remember that in war the history of whose cause > was just, whose heros the most noble, which side was divinely favored > is written by the survivors.
I'm from the South, we get that lesson hammered into us from birth. So lets make sure those of us who still believe in Western Civilization are the ones who survive to write the histories. That means Socialism, including the Democrat party, dies, and Islam gets gutted into a hollow shell like what Christanity and Judaism had to endure to be permitted to live in a rational world. Lets us redouble our efforts to bring that happy day into reality.
>..he should also be handed over to an international war crimes panel > to be tried for the use of torture on prisoners.
In a perfect world I'd agree, just to watch the shock and horror on assholes like you when he walked free. Because if they actually applied the Geneva Conventions as actually written there is no crime.
The Geneva conventions classify Al Queda members as unlawful enemy conbatants and you can just shoot em on sight if you want, they ain't got shit for rights. Go back to WW II and observe the Germans vs the French Resistance. In the main the Germans did follow the Geneva Conventions, but they shot the French Resistance and never gave it a second though and they didn't get brought up on charges for it when the war was over. Because irregulars (out of uniform) bearing arms or committing acts of sabotage or spying are "Unlawful Enemy Combatants" and other than explicitly allowing them to be shot are pretty much outside the scope of the Treaty. But even more black letter law, the Geneva Conventions only apply if the person captured is a soldier in the military service of a SIGNATORY country. AQ isn't and has no plans to be.
Which explains why uniformed Taliban soldiers captured during the opening days of the Afgan operation were given traditional POW status, as were Saddam's soldiers in both of the Iraq wars werw as well, while AQ gets to go to Gitmo and we could legally do pretty much anything to em legally. Tactically, politically and morally are of course different and militarilly important considerations.
Of course this not being a sane world, in fact being firmly in the asylum, none of that would matter should the "International Court of Justice" get it's hands on Bush or Cheney it would be an orgy of hate ending in an execution.
Slashdot Mirror
> Pickens is putting his money where his mouth is and at the same time
> helping America, that is a true Capitalist and a Patriot.
Sounded like that when I first heard of this... but I actually dig a little before jumping into supporting something. Check his WSJ piece of July 8 and these two quotes from adjacent paragraphs no less:
Quote #1
"It will be accomplished solely through private investment with no new consumer or corporate taxes or government regulation."
Quote #2
"The future begins as soon as Congress and the president act. The government must mandate the formation of wind and solar transmission corridors, and renew the subsidies for economic and alternative energy development in areas where the wind and sun are abundant."
Eh? Sounds like another corporate welfare client trying to get his grubby hands into my pocket.
If wind were really economical he wouldn't need subsidies and wouldn't be waiting on Congress to quit masturbating and do something.
News flash: Democrats LOVE these high gas prices, sure they wish the extra money were flowing into the Treasury instead of OPEC but they still can't work up any real displeasure at something that pushes their agenda so well. So why are they going to act?
Screw the hippie crap with wind, solar, etc., we are outta time. Build nuke plants. Not in twenty years, not in ten. I want a plan to have enough nuke plants online inside of five years to make electricity cheap enough to change the economics in favor of plug in electrics. We have the tech to build a safe nuke plant now, waste disposal is still an issue but we have time to work on that problem if we can avoid western civilization collapsing. And eventually I'm sure we will perfect the greener alternative energy sources and not need so many nuke plants... or we get finally solve fusion and quit worrying about energy.
> There's more plot and more stuff happens in those Verne novels..
Well if it's fast plotting grab the first few of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian books. Written as serials they tend to jump from one cliffhanger to another. While I enjoyed em, they did had a high cheese quotient when I read em a generation ago, not sure they would pass the smell test today. The later sequels should be passed over at any rate.
And the Heinlein juvi novels should be on anyone's short list. Starship Troopers and Moon is a Harsh Mistress should probably be held back until the mid teens at the earliest. Some of his later stuff is R rated at best.
> but they shouldn't be allowed to practice biological science.
Why? Just general religious bigotry on your part or is there some reasoning behind your proposed ban? Granted there are some areas of biological research where they might have some trouble but the field is pretty big. And a lot of so called 'evolution deniers' are in various grey areas. For example, if someone believes that species change over time but that the heap big skyfather is who kickstarted life instead of spontanious random genesis they can probably do 99.9% of what is currently done in biology with zero problems.
Sounds like you just want to supress any disenting views from your chosen religion. And yes secular humanism IS a religion in that it attempts to provide an all encompasing Theory to explain Life, the Universe and Everything complete with a moral code, which is why I'm an agnostic.
I suspect science might eventually explain the universe but it damned sure isn't close today. Science, logic and pure reason are currently poor tools to develop a moral code from, just as an example. Science is good at describing the universe, or the What part. Answering Why, not so good. And since pretty much by definition any attempt to ask about the universe pre big bang isn't science it is a poor tool to ask some of the really big questions of.... at least as we currently understand physics.
> If -I- were to taser you for noncompliance, I go to jail, because of
> my lack of a State Authorized shiny piece of tin on my chest.
One definition of 'government' is that it is the entity which claims a monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of force. Something to keep in mind when considering giving it additional authority, especially if the task can possibly be done by a private entity.
But thankfully our form of government (US) doesn't give a monopoly on teh use of force to the State. You CAN tase a bro if he is attempting to use force against you and in most jurisdictions (i.e those that are lawless) you will not be punished. The 2nd Amendment was recently affirmed to protect an individual right to the possession, bearing and yes the lawful use thereof. Our government gets it's powers from We the People and thus in theory doesn't any powers we didn't have to give it and we kept a generous portion.
> You realise that all the OS layers, networking layers, web browsers,
> scripting languages are primarily to try to get away from C?
So? You are missing the bigger point. All of those layers and scripting languages you speak of are written in C. So C working in Flash means all of that other stuff can be brought over. Perl + Flash? Python + Flash? Ruby? The mind boggles at the possibilities.
Of course since nobody will want to stuff all of Perl + half of CPAN down the pipe every time an applet loads we will end up with predownloaded versions cached for use. Let the package war begin, will flash binary packages be maintained with .deb or .rpm... I can see Windows users fighting Package Kit or Synaptic to manage the cruft needed so that "web apps" can work. We could end up with an entire GNU/Flash[1] distribution lurking on every Windows PC.
[1] I object to the GNU/Linux misnaming abomination but this time it really will be a "GNU" distribution since Linux won't be involved. At least until we get a formal 'distribution' being shipped by Adobe.
> We really do not know what obama will do.
But you are supporting him? Does the phrase 'cult of personality' ring any bells? But anyway, since you appear to be one of the saner ones posting herelet me ask a question.
Can you name a single (or several!) accomplishment of Senator Obama that marks him out as deserving of the highest office in the land? Note that I'm looking for something especially noteworthy, not just getting elected to the Senate (after knocking out all viable challengers before the first ballot was cast) or making a couple of nice speeches, if those things make Presidential material we have hundreds of eligible candidates.
I loath Sen McCain, McCain Feingold vs the 1st Amendment, McAmnesty, etc., but he HAS done things. Even things that can only be 'bipartisan' in that both sides have hated his guts at various times for them.
> As such, I CAN NOT vote for him.
I'm having the same problem in reverse, although Obambi is really making me want to vate for McCain, right now I'm still stuck waiting for him to answer what part of "Congress shall make no law..." is beyond his english comprehension abilities.
> They are the ones that have ran up monster deficits, invaded
> countries for no reason literally
Could you stop the McCain == Bush talking points for a moment? 'They' didn't do anything of the sort, McCain has been a budget hawk since forever, voting against the rest of the Repubs when they were spending like drunken sailors.
And I find your use of the plural revealing. Only the most diehard kostards think Afganistan didn't need an enema so what country other than Iraq are you thinking of? And Iraq needed invading for any of a dozen sound reasons, not least of which being that we were still formally at war and Saddam had been flaunting the cease fire terms for a decade. And since every intelligence agency in the free world believed Saddam had WMD and was planning on more as soon as he got out from under the mostly toothless UN sanctions it is totally unfair to condemn Bush for believing the same intelligence Hillary Clinton was reading when she voted for the war.
> and are so incompetent that when given the best military of the
> world AND the best advice from said military STILL botches it by
> believing that they are more intelligent.
Eh? I do believe it was McCain who was so critical of the administration policy in Iraq it made him a pariah in his own party... until Bush finally took his advice and things turned around.
Look, there are plenty of reasons NOT to like McCain, starting with his bipartisanship, but his positions on Iraq aren't among them as they have been spot on.
> Oh and I'm still bummed about the study the government is doing
> to make sure solar is environmentally friendly.
I think you are missing the entire point of the enviromental movement. Not your fault really since their stated goals are misinformation. They TALK about alterantive energy. But spot the recurring pattern in what they actually DO.
Solar? As you observed, the second anyone actually tries to get licensed for a large scale installation the whinging about some poor snail (frog, bird, etc) that is only distinguishable from the zillions of others that look like it by trained experts starts.
Windmills? Nah, the objections have already started. Give it a few years and precisely nowhere will be suitable for new ones. Windmills are unsightly and kill birds.
Water? Just try building a new dam and watch how fast the enviros object. Beaver dams to serve the purposes of beavers are wonders of nature. Human dams to serve the needs of humans are a blight on Gaia. Plus most of the best spots were aready in use before the green movement even started, so not much potential to grow anyway. Ok, how about water in the form of tidal energy? Nope, not unless you could provide an absolute promise that no living thing which swims in the sea could possibly be caught in one or even inconvienced.
Biofuels? As soon as we started actually producing in quantity the wailing is in full cry from every quarter. And corn is just a political boondoggle anyway. If Iowa lost it's 'First in the Nation' status in the Presidential primaries the whole stupid thing would be quickly forgotten. Fuel from other biomass has techical potential but probably won't survive the green politics.
Ok, how about geothermal then! Nope, they are already whining about that and we haven't actually deployed very much yet.
And of course the Big N is off the table, even suggesting it is enough to get the founder of Greenpeace thrown out of the enviromental movement.
> do you see a conflict of interest in wine not directly supporting
> MSOffice 2K at the gold level?
I want to use your excellect question as a springboard to expand to a broader question about the relationship between Codeweavers, Crossover Office and Wine.
I realize Crossover is what keeps you guys fed, clothed, etc. and more importantly for us users, adding code to the Wine repo. But there appear to be some downsides as well.
For example, take the original poster's question. CX has supported various versions of Office since the first release (since you actually managed to sell copies it is safe to assume the first release would run a version of Office well enough to have happy customers) but Wine isn't known to reliably run ANY version of Office with anything that would be called reliability. Is this something that will always be true, to drive sales of CX? Would outside contributions that removed these limitations from Wine even be merged?
More importantly than these specific questions, these issues and boundaries between Wine and CX aren't clearly spelled out. This becomes even more important now that Codeweavers is expanding the commercial product line into a game oriented product. We all realize Cedega is a bunch of leeches and probably won't ever be contributing anything of value back to Wine but if Codeweavers (meaning 'yall) also stop putting major functionality back into Wine or worse declining to merge competing versions...... Lots of questions, few answers.
But the biggest question I can come up with is this one. What would be the point of me (me taken as generic) considering looking at Wine with an eye to contributing unless I am first a Crossover Office customer? Because the odds are good that any particular missing feature in Wine is already implemented in CX, so one would first want to test there to avoid reinventing a wheel that probably wouldn't get merged anyway. So logically it is hard to see a motivation to contribute to Wine directly, and contributing to CX as an unpaid volunteer doesn't exactly give most free software devels a warm fuzzy feeling.
Mixed Free/Closed models are always a tricky balancing act. Clearly laying out what apps will be permitted to run under Wine and which will be reserved for CX would help people see where that line is going to be drawn.
> Can you please, please, please, get Alpha Centauri working!
Scrounge around places like eBay for the Loki Games port. Yes you have to google up some hints to get it running on the latest distros because libraries it depends on aren't installed by default anymore, but it can be done.
In the current model, Nvidia and ATI (now AMD) are the stars of the show. Gamers upgrade their video card at least anually, and now they often buy a pair to run SLI. The CPU is less important. Despite their efforts to force game devels to adopt multi-threaded game engines the uptake hasn't been what they need to drive sales of newer multi-core chips.
Move the heavy grunt of graphics from the GPU to the Intel Inside, so that gamers must have that octocore CPU and even better a pair of em and make em get wood over the rumored sixteen core chips and hang out at tech rumor websites to get the latest dope on em and Intel is back in charge of the PC world again.
Yes there are techincal issues, but those don't matter, this is a tech war between the chip vendors. AMD owning ATI makes things interesting, who knows how that will play out in the end, did they buy a GPU maker just as the GPU is dying? Do they have a PLAN that will make Intel the underdog again for a few years of catching up? Stay tuned.
> For example, Disney will have to pay for disney.fun
No they won't. They will buy disney and within six months traffic to .com, .org, .net, .anything will be darned near zero as usage of the AOL keyword version of the Internet becomes the new norm. Periods in URLS will be for losers who can't afford 'real' Internet names and nobody will think a Disney site would be on an old legacy domain as anything other than a redirector for someone using old ad copy.
It's worse. What they are proposing is nothing less than the total elimination of the current DNS and replacing it with AOL keywords. And raising the price a hundredfold while they are at it. And making sure it stays centralized under ICANN's control by cutting out the national registrars.
Within six months of going live .com will be but a memory as every entity with enough budget to buy bandwidth to actually run a server on buys their own TLD, or keyword. Ford.com becomes ford. google.com becomes google, mail.google.com probably becomes googlemail or mail.google, assuming they don't just outbid every other webmail company and just have 'email' or 'mail.' Just send to userid@email.
And domains will all be to the highest bidder with ICANN getting the money instead of domain squatters. Old legacy domains will be taken as a sign of a cheap bastard who can't afford a 'real' name.
> No no no no. Burn it 9 times, with three different brands of media
> on three different burners.
That is proably overkill for anything but the most important of documents, and for those something more durable than DVD is probably called for.
However I do make it a habit to burn important things like photos to two discs. I make sure each disc is a different brand and then store them seperately. Manufacturers do vary among each other and over time. I don't want to lose as much as a year of photos because a plant had a bad batch. And storing them seperate gives some protection against storage problems. One set is in a cheap little photo album looking CD storage thingy and the other set is in normal in DVD cases.
And I don't use bulk media for long term storage. I try to stick to name brands, and Memorex isn't a real brand. Cheap media is of course perfect for most use.
> Well, I sasked your door permission to open by turning the handle,
> and when it did, since it was unlocked, I entered your house while
> you were gone today.
Bad analogy. Better would be I knocked on your door and a lady opened the door and said "Hi." So I asked if I could borrow the phone to call AAA and arrange for a tow. And she said "OK." Turns out she was just the maid and the homeowner got all freaked out for some reason when they found us in the bedroom getting our freak on.
Your AP is acting as your agent in this transaction, when I ask it for a 'cup 'o bandwidth' and it says "Sure, have some." it isn't my fault if you later don't think I should have been using your network. Tell your AP not to give your stuff away to strangers. If somebody tricks it they have crossed the line and should be punished, but you can't put people in jail for politely asking for permission and taking Yes for an answer.
> Are there really game developers out there who really think DX10
> is the way to go instead of OpenGL at this point?
Doesn't matter. Microsoft sells the publishers and they tell the developers what to do. And when logic and reason fail they pay em to develop to DX and if even that doesn't work threats usually do the trick. Besides. it makes the Xbox port so much easier if you use DX.
> For that matter, are there really game developers out there who
> still consider Windows the only viable gaming platform in the
> long term..
No, most seem to be leaving for the consoles. Getting the few left on Windows to take the hit on development time and performance to use multi-platform libs is hard. Especially in view of the above mentioned incentives to tie the title to Windows APIs.
If you are developing in PHP I'd guess your app is a pretty simple graphical app and doesn't have hooks into the OS, especially if it runs in Wine. So packaging a native Linux version should not be a problem.
.deb based systems always include the ability to install an rpm via alien/etc. since the LSB mandates rpm package support. But a little more effort would get you a Debian package in a repo so Debian/Ubuntu users get the automagic update love also.
Step one, create a generic RPM with as few dependencies as possible. If the size isn't totally insane just static link the sucker. Put it in a yum repo on your site along with a repo package. Give users instructions on how to add in the repo. Now you get to automagically upgrade them as you release new versions and with a little effort you can cover all yum/rpm distros. rpm based distros without yum can still manually install the rpm.
You can stop there if you like since
So that should cover Fedora, RHEL & clones, SUSE, Debian plus Ubuntu & it's growing offspring and thus cover 90% of real world users. Toss in a tarball for anybody who might complain they were left out.
The Windows Installshield way only looks easier, long term it is a nightmare because it doesn't provide for auto updates so everybody gets to reinvent that wheel.
> It's one thing to claim that their car doesn't work, it's another
> to claim it doesn't work because what it proposes to do is impossible.
Conservation of Energy says that what they are claiming is impossible. Water simply cannot be the fuel source for a hydrogen fueled energy source. When you burn (i.e. oxidize) hydrogen you get water as the result. Since no machine yet devised by man is 100% efficient the machine can't even sit and spin, to say nothing of produce enough excess energy to move a vehicle.
What they are claiming is more fantastic than a perpetual motion machine and the Patent Office stopped bothering to examine perpetual motion applications decades ago. Used to be every generation of half educated 'scientists' would learn just enough about magnets to get convinced there just 'had' to be an arrangement of them that would create perpetual motion, totally ignoring conservation of energy. Now the fetish seems to be moving to the water -> hydrogen + oxygen -> water cycle.
Now the claims of some in this thread that they are actually getting the energy from an Aluminum + water -> hydrogen + ? reaction is possible, but that isn't what they are claiming. And if they did it would be an Aluminum powered vehicle and we would be asking how many miles per pound it gets.
> Drm is here to stay whether we like it or not.
I used to fear that would be true, and many would pronounce it as flatly as you just did only a year or two ago. But you are now the exception.
DRM is pretty much dead on music these days. DVD has been totally cracked for years now and the sky hasn't fallen, DVD sales are still good. The defunct HD-DVD was already cracked and BD's first line of defense has already fallen. It is only a matter of time before the advanced crypto falls. And it won't kill HD content sales when it happens. Eventually the fear, uncertainty and doubt in Hollywood will meet reality.
The cell phone industry is going to take a bit longer, especially with the government mixed up in things. But I'm betting DRM gets pushed back to the SIM within a decade. You can't really open up that lowest layer of the stack without rethinking the entire worldwide phone network so that will probably be with us a bit longer.
> Future versions of windows will be locked to signed drm executables
> as well and its the wave of the future.
Had Microsoft been able to force TCPA into Vista they probably would indeed been able to put us all into an X-Box Hell forever. But their window of opportunity has probably closed forever. By the time Windows 7 ships they aren't likely to have a monopoly anymore. Dominant, yes. Monopoly that can dictate who can and cannot sell software for Windows and demand a 'taste' of every sale X-Box style, no. Apple and ASUS have pretty much settled that question.
> What kind of experience? Has either Sen. McCain or Sen. Obama
> ever been a governor?
How about experience on the national stage in general. Experience with national politics and foreign affairs. Had Obama had a little he wouldn't have made that stupid comment about meeting dictators with no preconditions just because some fatuous twat on YouTube got picked by CNN. He has been trying to spin his way out of a problem for months that an experienced candidate would never have gotten himself into.
How about some actual policies? Clinton ran on Change, Carter ran on Change. The new and improved Hope and Change is getting old, how about some actual policy recommendations that aren't warmed over Marxism.
As opposed to McCains kill terrosists first, THEN we can have Socialism.
Bah!
> I thought Obama was the candidate who stopped taking money
> from lobbyists and PACs.
You are supposed to believe that. So he takes the money from the members of the PAC instead of the PAC, which if course makes it all right. And he brags that he doesn't accept money from corporations, implying that his opponents do... one problem, it's illegal for corporations to contribute. But he takes plenty from rich CEOs and high officials of corporations, as do his opponents.
Sorry, your Messiah is just another crooked Chicago Democrat. He just reads a teleprompter better than Mayor Daley.
> True Conservatism is nearly gone.
That was the problem, at least this cycle. McCain won more by default than by winning. With no conservative in the race he just walked into the nomination.
Romney? Nah, MA liberal posing as a conservative
Fred! Threw red meat.... then when he finally got in nothing
Huck? Not a conservative. Prolife liberal tried to cover with Fairtax support
Brownback? Who? Never got above the noise floor. Bad in the debates.
Hunter? Who? Never got above the noise floor. Add Coulter liked him.
Tancredo? I'm conservative and he scared me with his crazy
Paul? Not a conservative, an idiotarian libertarian
Rudy Republican for NY, never had a chance elsewhere
> McCain has compromised his position of integrity with both parties
> to the point where no one can really trust him.
Not really, he hasn't been a conservative and barely a Republican since he got the itch to run for POTUS in 2000 so there isn't much trust to lose on our side. But he hasn't met a Democrat he wasn't ready to 'compromise' with yet. And of course compromise is here used in the Democrat sense where it is defined by a Republican agreeing with the Democrat, thus proving he/she has 'grown.'
McCain is basically Joe Leiberman with an R after his name. A non-idiotarian on foreign policy but a typical tax, spend and regulate Dem on pretty much everything else.
> LOTS of people who refuse to vote for McCain.
Add me to the list. I just sent the Party a letter telling them to save their postage on me because there ain't a chance in Hell of me sending them money this year. But I did invite them to keep my name on their lists in the hope that next time they wouldn't nominate someone who is a menace to our form of government.
I watched McCain blow off criticism of his McCain/Fiengold abomination by saying "People out in the country don't care about that, they never ask me about it." Well that is only because the only time the bastard enters my State it is to Karma Whore in New Orleans and I'm just not up to driving five hours to perhaps get a chance to ask the fool "English, Motherfucker! Do you speak it? 'What part of Congress shall make no law' goes over your pointed head?" (And get promptly escourted out by security.)
Seriously, I EXPECT Democrats to wipe their asses on the Constituition. They at least have the excuse that they don't pretend to believe in our form of government so they are at least being consistent. After all, that's the heart of the Change they Believe in, finishing the job of replacing our republican form of government with a Marxist Workers' Paridise.
Between now and election day Obama is likely to piss me off badly enough that I'll vote against him but if McCain thinks I support him just because he pretends to be a Republican he better think again. With luck I will just leave the top of the ballot blank and concentrate on electing a conservative Rep (we have two good ones running to replace the returing one) and ousting a bad Dem Senator for an OK Republican convert.
> ..remember when I was a kid my mother didn't have to work..
Blame the feminists for that one. When women were not expected to work the whole system was 'play balanced' to allow a single wage earner to win the game of life. Then the feminists, especially after WWII, rewrote life's rules. Women went into the work force in droves and for a while those two income families had an advantage over their single wage earning peers. But the iron laws of economics being what they are, things quickly adapted. Our expectations of what defined 'the good life' scaled up so that two income families were then the norm and unless the single wage earner had a really good job they would be at the bottom of the pile.
Take another look at the other statistoc you cite. Your father's house cost 3X his annual wage, yours cost 6X. If your wife were in the labor force your house would cost closer to 3X your family income, i.e. no significant change. If there were a demand for them I suspect you could buy houses at 3X your income... that were as bad as the one you grew up in; no central air, crappy or no insulation, single pane glass, a lot fewer square feet on a smaller plot, at best a one car garage, etc.
Before I get flamed, nobody should take what I wrote as an argument that women should not have entered the workforce, that they should be home baking cookies or any of that. What I am saying is that nothing comes without a price, including even liberty.
> The judgement quoted the 1958 ICRC commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention:
One small problem. I can't find any evidence the US signed the Fourth Geneva Convention. The first three were sane, the later attempts were Soviet efforts to extend legal protection to their various 'revolutionary' movements around the world and tie the hands of the West in dealing with the problem.
So while Yugoslavia, being a Soviet client state at the time, signed and was subject to it, we didn't and aren't.
But ultimately, in the case you speak of, insurgents, International law can go screw itself. If a revolution breaks out here I'd expect the government to deal with it pretty much however it wished as a purely internal matter outside the scope of Internalional Law, subject only to the lawful control of US instituitions like Congress or our own Courts.
> Yes our president is an idiot. I'm saddened both that I voted for
> him and that I'd do it again.
Ain't it the painful truth? Put Shrub on a ballot with the two losers we must pick from and I'd push his button. Even though he bungled the war, and McCain WAS right on that point and the need for more troops. Even though he was for McAmnesty and signed (foolishly believing the Supremes would do the right thing and ask McCain what part of "Congress shall make no law..." he was missing) McCain Feingold. Even though he was the asshole responsible for the Prescription Drug fiasco and bungled Social Security reform so badly it will likely be another generation before anybody else dares try again.
> It may be useful to remember that in war the history of whose cause
> was just, whose heros the most noble, which side was divinely favored
> is written by the survivors.
I'm from the South, we get that lesson hammered into us from birth. So lets make sure those of us who still believe in Western Civilization are the ones who survive to write the histories. That means Socialism, including the Democrat party, dies, and Islam gets gutted into a hollow shell like what Christanity and Judaism had to endure to be permitted to live in a rational world. Lets us redouble our efforts to bring that happy day into reality.
> ..he should also be handed over to an international war crimes panel
> to be tried for the use of torture on prisoners.
In a perfect world I'd agree, just to watch the shock and horror on assholes like you when he walked free. Because if they actually applied the Geneva Conventions as actually written there is no crime.
The Geneva conventions classify Al Queda members as unlawful enemy conbatants and you can just shoot em on sight if you want, they ain't got shit for rights. Go back to WW II and observe the Germans vs the French Resistance. In the main the Germans did follow the Geneva Conventions, but they shot the French Resistance and never gave it a second though and they didn't get brought up on charges for it when the war was over. Because irregulars (out of uniform) bearing arms or committing acts of sabotage or spying are "Unlawful Enemy Combatants" and other than explicitly allowing them to be shot are pretty much outside the scope of the Treaty. But even more black letter law, the Geneva Conventions only apply if the person captured is a soldier in the military service of a SIGNATORY country. AQ isn't and has no plans to be.
Which explains why uniformed Taliban soldiers captured during the opening days of the Afgan operation were given traditional POW status, as were Saddam's soldiers in both of the Iraq wars werw as well, while AQ gets to go to Gitmo and we could legally do pretty much anything to em legally. Tactically, politically and morally are of course different and militarilly important considerations.
Of course this not being a sane world, in fact being firmly in the asylum, none of that would matter should the "International Court of Justice" get it's hands on Bush or Cheney it would be an orgy of hate ending in an execution.