John Carmack is a threat to Democracy, and has already proven that he is willing to devote massive amounts of time and development dollars to the pursuit of weapons of mass distraction, like Quake, Doom, and his.plan file.
Because of this, I ask the Congress to give me the authority to invade John Carmack. Failing that authorization, I'll just do it anyway.
Your comment on it being "real" makes me think of one thing a simple construction worker has over a $60k/yr software engineer. 50 years from now, it's pretty likely their handywork will still exist.
Well, Journalists are supposed to be protected from such things to protect anonymous sources
No. Shield laws are a state's rights issue. There is no Federal shield law. In Federal investigations, Federal Law takes precedence - take California's recently neutered medical marijuana law as an example.
but since I just googled and found where some reporters have been jailed for refusing to tell who a source was, I guess that went out the window... and so now I see the problem.
A reporter (Judith Miller of the New York Times) has been jailed for refusing to name the source of the information she may have dissemenated regarding a covert agent in the United States' Intelligence community.
(Cue the hordes of Freepers who will insist said agent was not under cover because she wasn't sneaking around Instanbul with a Walther PPK in her bra.)
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics...my freelance gig in front of one of the new Macs (a 1.6terahz G6 w/256 Gigs of RAM and OS X Manx)....from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. And there's a popup screen telling me "Don't Steal Movies....
At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
Well...if you think about it, they never really needed DRM for their OS before. Basically, using PPC was their DRM. Now, they kind of have to do it, don't they? Otherwise someone will hack OS X to work on any machine with an Intel processor and that will cannibalize Apple's hardware sales.
There are other reasons for using the TPM. I'm sure someone with a vivid imagination will come up with more reasons, but here are a couple I came up with when I read the article title:
As mentioned, OS X for Intel could concievably be modified to run on commodity hardware, denying Apple deserved money for the software and hardware income streams of their business. The TPM helps them avoid piracy.
You could concieveably use any licensed media on any TPM-equipped Mac simply by signing into your account.
An added layer of defense against viruses and malware.
Enforcing iWork and Final Cut/Logic/etc. licenses while adding some easy machine-to-machine portability to those same products.
I don't think Apple is overly agressive when it comes to licensing and DRM. If anything, they'll likely follow their tradition of using products like this to not only render accesible new content, but to provide new features.
As with USB, Apple is employing a new technology that will cause some disruption to be sure, but it'll also help to overcome the inertia that comes with the commodity PC/Windows market.
People who scream about the DRM sky falling are being shortsighted. The TPM provides for much more than copyright enforcement - it also provides a way to avoid entering serial numbers, inadvertent per-CPU licensing transgression, and could make finding stolen products easier.
I think it was $200 million in nonvoting Apple stock MS also paid Apple another $200 million to settle a lawsuit Apple brought against MS.
This was the QuickTIme settlement, massaged to create feel-good press about both companies during a time when Microsoft was enduring massive antitrust pressure (remember when the attorney general worked against monopolies in the public's interest, instead of covering up titties?) and Apple was on a literal deathwatch.
I worked at Apple at the time, and the rumor was that Apple had Microsoft dead-to-rights over cribbed QuickTime code. Line for line copying from Apple's source. Ooops!
Along with other rumors and stories, this one was never vetted in the mainstream computer press; it kind of disappeared when MSFT "invested" 150 million (a paltry sum to Apple, even then), agreed to keep developing Office for the Mac, and paid an undisclosed amount to Apple.
Most people have never heard about the last part, and I don't even know if it's true, but it was the scuttlebutt at the time.
Stock options used to be limited to upper management too, until businesses decided they were a lucrative recruiting tool.
Perhaps signing a loyalty clause in exchange for favored treatment as an employee (first review sooner, higher minimum yearly raise, etc.) will become a new incentive for prospective employees.
It may not sound plausible NOW...but then again, used to be that a company hired you, taught you, hung on to you until you retired. Both my grandfathers got gold watches, and never thought of changing careers or companies for thirty years. In twenty years, who knows? You may have to sign a loyalty clause to get your offer letter.
I'd wager that your average engineer has more stategic know-how than most vice presidents; VPs are about presentation.
Look, what if this kind of thinking gets to the point where I'll have to sign non-compete agreements and give six months' notice if I'm involved with anything significant?
I'm thinking that if I touch or look at anything hardware or software related beffore the product ships, I'll be forced to wait before leaving, making me a lame duck for more than two weeks or worse.
At what point do we say it's not OK to treat people as intellectual chattel? It's bad enough that many high-tech workers I know spend 60 hours a week at work as a matter of course; at some point we're not even trusted to keep our mouths shut when we go to a company that doesn't even directly compete with us?
Note that I don't see Google as a direct competitor to Microsoft; I think they're playing a much more sly game of outflanking Microsoft by creating compelling content and ways to access that content over the web. Microsoft's specialty is writing ginormous pices of software. Google is changing the paradigm; they're only a competitor to Microsoft in that they're changing the game.
I'd settle for banning idiots that still post about the dangers of cell phones. Yes, we know we're putting little bitty microamp transcievers next to our heads. No, we don't care.
And while I'm at it, why the f*ck does a solar pipe need a fricken' 9 volt battery for? Bueller?
Liquid hydrogen (the stuff in the big, brown tank, along with liquid oxygen) has a boiling temperature of about -434 degrees fahrenheit.
The launch site is next to the ocean and bounded by swamps and rivers. Humidity at the launch site is quite high. The surface of the external tank, if exposed to the atmosphere without the foam, would develop a very thick layer of ice - a material with considerably higher density than foam.
Now, which would you rather flake off of your orbiter during climbout: ice, or foam?
Apple's "sprawling" campus is actually quite a bit smaller than it used to be. The buildings in the Santa Clara Valley are now clustered around the intersection of Mariani St. and De Anza Blvd.
Instead of maintaining satellite buildings like customer service in Campbell and the printer and imaging group located in Sunnyvale, Apple pulled everything within a three-block radius of 1 Infinite Loop between 1996 and 1998. Just that single move seemed to wonders for corporate communications, although it was well underway when Steve came home.
Compared to many other large tech companies in the valley, Apple's "campus" is relatively small, but tightly integrated. For example, not only is there an excellent restaraunt in place of the old "Cafe Macs", but there is a relatively decent brew pub with a cute name in the parking lot and another beer/TV joint across the street.
Wow - I passed my tech exam in 1992. Good to know this is out there.
Honestly, Morse was the most intimidating part of the exam for me and other people taking the Technician class exam at the time. Now that I'm older, it doesn't seem that big a deal, but when I was just out of high school, it was a little scary.
Uhh, what about Barkesdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, LA? It's one of the largest B-52 bases in the world and sprawls over several square miles. I would consider that a pretty large military presence.
True, Barksdale is one of the few B-52 bases left - but it's certainly a lightweight in terms of total military presence compared to Eglin AFB, Ft. Hood, and other bases in nearby states.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'd wager that even with the reduced staffing at Travis AFB, the near-shutdown of military presence at Moffet Field, and the drawdown of the once-significant Navy presence on the Bay, we've still got twice the military personnel than the entire state of Louisiana. I may be wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was right.
Since George W. Bush took office the first time, we've heard nothing but paranoid anti-American ravings of vitriol aimed at him and his admin.
Sound like you've been Hannitized!
Don't worry. I heard that they're working on a vaccine. It's called a massive budget deficit and $350 billion spent in Iraq. I heard that only 90 people were killed there today - we're making progress!
Of course I'm a little worried that maybe Louisiana is not the best place to try something like this... since Louisiana is by some metrics of measurement the most corruption-plagued state government in the union... does the City of Lafayette tend to suffer from this similarly?
No. While Louisiana is famous for it's politicians who get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Lafayette is one of the brightest spots on the map when it comes to honesty and relative transparency in city-parish government.
Unlike most other states, many Parishes and Cities in Louisiana have joined to form city-parish governments. (Parishes in Louisiana are analogous to Counties in other states).
Lafayette, once the parish seat of Lafayette Parish, is now the seat of the city-parish government, which is responsible for the oversight of Lafayette Utility Services, which is in turn responsible for installation (done)*, buildout (ongoing) and maintenance of the fiber network.
(In the olden days (pre-1983 or so), Lafayette Parish's unincorporated areas were maintained by the Police Jury a quasi-enforcement non-rulemaking entity. Now the city and unincorporated areas are goverened by the same entity; municipalities within the parish maintain their own town/city governments.)
*As far as I understand it, most of the dark fiber ring encircling most of Lafayette (the city) was put in place over the last ten years during significant drainage and road upgrades.
You don't sound like you'te from Lafayette. The vast majority of us go to church. I would guess that over half of my high school classmates go to church - and that's probably the one demographic with the lowest religiousness. One website I saw reports around 80% church membership for Lafayette.
I call bullshit.
I went to Teurlings Catholic High School, and I doubt that 1/3 of the people at my last reunion have been in a church in the past year.
If you went to school in Lafayette, chances are that you did NOT go to a religious school, and I sincerely doubt that 1/2 of the graduating class of any of Lafayette's high schools are weekly churchgoers - even in a very religious town in a very religious part of the country.
Governments provide services like these when corporate entities can't or won't. That is one of the jobs of government.
The article doesn't mention, and I've seen no one bring it up, but Lafayette has had a fiber infrastructure ringing the city for years now - unused, dark fiber circling the city limits.
Did Cox or BellSouth step up to use this unpaved, but graded and cleared roadway? No. They insisted on using their own outdated, aging infrastructure.
If this turns out like many of Lafayette Utility Service's other projects, the results should be spectacular. 100Mb to your desk - at home or office.
No wonder BellSouth and Cocks cable were reluctant to step up...they'll lose the customers they have when Lafayette gets it's network lit.
Except that it leaves the city with absolutely no competitors over time, and gives the government complete and utter control over every citizen's internet access. Don't you find that just a bit disturbing, or are you one of those folks who trusts government (and your neighbors) implicitly?
As a former resident of Lafayette Parish, I can assure you that no one in city government gives a shita bout what you're doing on the Internet.
Unless you live next door. And that would be no different if your beighbor worked for BellSouth/Cocks Cable.
The overwhelming majority of all abortions, (95%), are done as a means of birth control.
Then maybe you should teach children about sex when they're most likely to be doing stupid thing with each other, instead of asking them to abstain completely, which they will not do.
ok sorry about that abortion is one of my buttons.
You have a uterus? Oh. Then you have no real say.
But then neither do I, which is why I support choice - because I have no say in the matter, but a woman should.
Do you really think the " Christo-Republicanism" "gripping the state is "Characterized by abject fear; cowardly"?
I didn't say that Republicans were cowardly for hiding behind the Christ, but here are my thoughts on it.
I think the "Christo-Republican" political base is in fact quite bold in it's assertion of principles, picking and choosing chapter and verse as necessary, as Jimmy Swaggart was so good at. Like Swaggart, they'll likely be forgiven time and time again as long as they duck behind an unimpeachable icon: the church.
Among other things, the Republican party and their allies in the "pay for Jesus" movement teach that old testament principles (the angry, world-destroying, testing God) should be intermingled with new testament principles (Forgiveness despite intent) by followers as they so please and dictate.
Abortion? Wrong in every case, despite intent, original sin, etc. Eye for an eye death penalty? Right in every case, despite the imperfect and often jaundiced legal system available to the poor.
As to your roads comment, it's arguable that most of those bad roads (and I agree, most have seen better days) wouldn't even be laid down if it weren't for the populist movement in Louisiana during the late '30s. Huey was many things: a drunk (or was that Earl?) a cheat, a liar...but he was also godawful poor when he was a little boy, and he knew that if he could spread the money around to his friends and make things marginally better for the little people living under the twin threats of flood and remoteness, he would be revered. And he was.
Back to the roads. The roads that I liken to Lafayette's existing dark fiber ring and proposed FTTH. (Have to stay on topic.)
Consider that the Houston->New Orleans corridor sees 1: more heavy truck traffic than most other continuous four lane interstate routes (I-5 from L.A. to San Francisco sees less heavy truck traffic.) and 2: that Louisiana Interstates and highways below Alexandria are mostly built on fill or ground that is given to subsiding, unlike the mixed swamp and prairie west of Lafayette and 3: that Louisiana has one of the highest ration of bridge (expensive to build and maintain) to bedded roads in the nation...
(By the way - the elevated freeways above the Atchfalaya Basin and Lake Ponchartrain are pretty amazing engineering feats and...did I mention Free? It's not like traffic would have a choice if they decided to make it a toll road.) The Atchafalaya Basin freeway handles more traffic than most Interstates...and it sits on 60 foot pilings.
whew. Had to catch my breath there.
...and it's no surprise the roads suck. Louisiana also has a lower per-capita income, so the tax base is less than Texas. Sorry our roads suck. Why don't you fill up in Lake Charles next time you're in the state and help out? Better yet, stay out of the Casinos - they're a net loss of tax dollars. Eat, drink, be merry and stay in a hotel instead - you'll eat better, fell better, and help the Bayou state keep it's roads up.
I grew up in Lafayette. Rather, I grew up in Carencro, a few miles north, but since two Interstates cross in Lafayette (I-10 and I-49) more people know where it is. I spent much of my childhood there, since both my parents worked in "town".
Louisiana, despite the craven Christo-Republicanism currently grippping the state, has long and deep populist roots. Louisiana was one of the first states to have free textbooks for public school kids, and during a time when the state's agricultural base was in tatters, Huey Long rode to success on taxing the oil companies who were then punching a hole in the mud wherever they could, and using the money (well, most of it, anyway, or whatever didn't fall under the table) to build roads across the waterways that divided the state.
John Breaux and Bennet Johnson continued this tradition on the federal level to a certain extent; while Louisiana never had a large Air Force, Army, or Navy presence, and missed out on much of the Space Race southern welfare programs of the 60s, the state did get some heap-big federal dollars for I-10 across the Atchafalaya, I-55 through Manchac, and I-49 from Lafayette to Alexandria, which was one of the largest earthmoving projects in Insterstate highway history, and opened a remote part of the state to high speed travel, cutting the time from Lafayette to Alexandria to just under two hours in 1999 from a little under five hours in 1980.
Because of the infrastructure building, Louisiana is a far, far different place today. Lafayette's vote is a reflection of the very deeply-held Louisiana belief that big comanies get their money from the citizens anyway; why shouldn't we try to build one ourselves, with our money, and do it better?
Lafayette, by the way, has one of the best public utility systems around. LUS has always been self-sustaining, sells power to other utilities to lower ratepayer burden, and Lafayette is one of the cities that when hit by a hurricane, always amanges to get the power back on within a few days. They've also done an amazing job of cleaning up the neglected Vermilion river.
I'm proud to be from there, especially with the outcome of this vote, and the margin.
The fact that the article you cite is based on analysts' predictions made before the earnings announcement numbers I cited were announced...well, doesn't say much for your reading comprehension, friend. But you didn't read the article you linked to anyway, did you?
The article you cited is titled "Apple May Say Earnings Jumped, IPod Shipments Fell in 3rd-Qtr". The big giveaway is the word "may" the title of the article; Bloomberg's story was about what analysts were speculating Apple would say later in the day. Turns out that the analysts (as they so often are with Apple) were wrong.
Forgive me for being a little pedantic; it's just so obvous you wanted a reason to rant about iPods that I felt it appropriate to point things out in minute detail for you.
Slashdot Mirror
John Carmack is a threat to Democracy, and has already proven that he is willing to devote massive amounts of time and development dollars to the pursuit of weapons of mass distraction, like Quake, Doom, and his .plan file.
Because of this, I ask the Congress to give me the authority to invade John Carmack. Failing that authorization, I'll just do it anyway.
Thank you, and good night.
Not if it's a Kaufman and Broad "home".
No. Shield laws are a state's rights issue. There is no Federal shield law. In Federal investigations, Federal Law takes precedence - take California's recently neutered medical marijuana law as an example.
but since I just googled and found where some reporters have been jailed for refusing to tell who a source was, I guess that went out the window... and so now I see the problem.
A reporter (Judith Miller of the New York Times) has been jailed for refusing to name the source of the information she may have dissemenated regarding a covert agent in the United States' Intelligence community.
(Cue the hordes of Freepers who will insist said agent was not under cover because she wasn't sneaking around Instanbul with a Walther PPK in her bra.)
Worst. Troll. Ever.
There are other reasons for using the TPM. I'm sure someone with a vivid imagination will come up with more reasons, but here are a couple I came up with when I read the article title:
I don't think Apple is overly agressive when it comes to licensing and DRM. If anything, they'll likely follow their tradition of using products like this to not only render accesible new content, but to provide new features.
As with USB, Apple is employing a new technology that will cause some disruption to be sure, but it'll also help to overcome the inertia that comes with the commodity PC/Windows market.
People who scream about the DRM sky falling are being shortsighted. The TPM provides for much more than copyright enforcement - it also provides a way to avoid entering serial numbers, inadvertent per-CPU licensing transgression, and could make finding stolen products easier.
This was the QuickTIme settlement, massaged to create feel-good press about both companies during a time when Microsoft was enduring massive antitrust pressure (remember when the attorney general worked against monopolies in the public's interest, instead of covering up titties?) and Apple was on a literal deathwatch.
I worked at Apple at the time, and the rumor was that Apple had Microsoft dead-to-rights over cribbed QuickTime code. Line for line copying from Apple's source. Ooops!
Along with other rumors and stories, this one was never vetted in the mainstream computer press; it kind of disappeared when MSFT "invested" 150 million (a paltry sum to Apple, even then), agreed to keep developing Office for the Mac, and paid an undisclosed amount to Apple.
Most people have never heard about the last part, and I don't even know if it's true, but it was the scuttlebutt at the time.
This is the way Windows works. If I wanted Windows, I'd buy Windows. I don't want Windows. I have a Mac.
Stock options used to be limited to upper management too, until businesses decided they were a lucrative recruiting tool.
Perhaps signing a loyalty clause in exchange for favored treatment as an employee (first review sooner, higher minimum yearly raise, etc.) will become a new incentive for prospective employees.
It may not sound plausible NOW...but then again, used to be that a company hired you, taught you, hung on to you until you retired. Both my grandfathers got gold watches, and never thought of changing careers or companies for thirty years. In twenty years, who knows? You may have to sign a loyalty clause to get your offer letter.
I'd wager that your average engineer has more stategic know-how than most vice presidents; VPs are about presentation.
Look, what if this kind of thinking gets to the point where I'll have to sign non-compete agreements and give six months' notice if I'm involved with anything significant?
I'm thinking that if I touch or look at anything hardware or software related beffore the product ships, I'll be forced to wait before leaving, making me a lame duck for more than two weeks or worse.
At what point do we say it's not OK to treat people as intellectual chattel? It's bad enough that many high-tech workers I know spend 60 hours a week at work as a matter of course; at some point we're not even trusted to keep our mouths shut when we go to a company that doesn't even directly compete with us?
Note that I don't see Google as a direct competitor to Microsoft; I think they're playing a much more sly game of outflanking Microsoft by creating compelling content and ways to access that content over the web. Microsoft's specialty is writing ginormous pices of software. Google is changing the paradigm; they're only a competitor to Microsoft in that they're changing the game.
I'd settle for banning idiots that still post about the dangers of cell phones. Yes, we know we're putting little bitty microamp transcievers next to our heads. No, we don't care.
And while I'm at it, why the f*ck does a solar pipe need a fricken' 9 volt battery for? Bueller?
I'm going to treat this as if you were serious...
Liquid hydrogen (the stuff in the big, brown tank, along with liquid oxygen) has a boiling temperature of about -434 degrees fahrenheit.
The launch site is next to the ocean and bounded by swamps and rivers. Humidity at the launch site is quite high. The surface of the external tank, if exposed to the atmosphere without the foam, would develop a very thick layer of ice - a material with considerably higher density than foam.
Now, which would you rather flake off of your orbiter during climbout: ice, or foam?
No.
Sincerely,
The Guys.
Just a nit:
Apple's "sprawling" campus is actually quite a bit smaller than it used to be. The buildings in the Santa Clara Valley are now clustered around the intersection of Mariani St. and De Anza Blvd.
Instead of maintaining satellite buildings like customer service in Campbell and the printer and imaging group located in Sunnyvale, Apple pulled everything within a three-block radius of 1 Infinite Loop between 1996 and 1998. Just that single move seemed to wonders for corporate communications, although it was well underway when Steve came home.
Compared to many other large tech companies in the valley, Apple's "campus" is relatively small, but tightly integrated. For example, not only is there an excellent restaraunt in place of the old "Cafe Macs", but there is a relatively decent brew pub with a cute name in the parking lot and another beer/TV joint across the street.
Wow - I passed my tech exam in 1992. Good to know this is out there.
Honestly, Morse was the most intimidating part of the exam for me and other people taking the Technician class exam at the time. Now that I'm older, it doesn't seem that big a deal, but when I was just out of high school, it was a little scary.
Now typing...I could do 90wpm there.
True, Barksdale is one of the few B-52 bases left - but it's certainly a lightweight in terms of total military presence compared to Eglin AFB, Ft. Hood, and other bases in nearby states.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'd wager that even with the reduced staffing at Travis AFB, the near-shutdown of military presence at Moffet Field, and the drawdown of the once-significant Navy presence on the Bay, we've still got twice the military personnel than the entire state of Louisiana. I may be wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was right.
Sound like you've been Hannitized!
Don't worry. I heard that they're working on a vaccine. It's called a massive budget deficit and $350 billion spent in Iraq. I heard that only 90 people were killed there today - we're making progress!
No. While Louisiana is famous for it's politicians who get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Lafayette is one of the brightest spots on the map when it comes to honesty and relative transparency in city-parish government.
Unlike most other states, many Parishes and Cities in Louisiana have joined to form city-parish governments. (Parishes in Louisiana are analogous to Counties in other states).
Lafayette, once the parish seat of Lafayette Parish, is now the seat of the city-parish government, which is responsible for the oversight of Lafayette Utility Services, which is in turn responsible for installation (done)*, buildout (ongoing) and maintenance of the fiber network.
(In the olden days (pre-1983 or so), Lafayette Parish's unincorporated areas were maintained by the Police Jury a quasi-enforcement non-rulemaking entity. Now the city and unincorporated areas are goverened by the same entity; municipalities within the parish maintain their own town/city governments.)
*As far as I understand it, most of the dark fiber ring encircling most of Lafayette (the city) was put in place over the last ten years during significant drainage and road upgrades.
I call bullshit.
I went to Teurlings Catholic High School, and I doubt that 1/3 of the people at my last reunion have been in a church in the past year.
If you went to school in Lafayette, chances are that you did NOT go to a religious school, and I sincerely doubt that 1/2 of the graduating class of any of Lafayette's high schools are weekly churchgoers - even in a very religious town in a very religious part of the country.
Just another careless posting by postmaster Zonk.
Zonk: La. is a state. L.A. is...a state of mind!
The article doesn't mention, and I've seen no one bring it up, but Lafayette has had a fiber infrastructure ringing the city for years now - unused, dark fiber circling the city limits.
Did Cox or BellSouth step up to use this unpaved, but graded and cleared roadway? No. They insisted on using their own outdated, aging infrastructure.
If this turns out like many of Lafayette Utility Service's other projects, the results should be spectacular. 100Mb to your desk - at home or office.
No wonder BellSouth and Cocks cable were reluctant to step up...they'll lose the customers they have when Lafayette gets it's network lit.
As a former resident of Lafayette Parish, I can assure you that no one in city government gives a shita bout what you're doing on the Internet.
Unless you live next door. And that would be no different if your beighbor worked for BellSouth/Cocks Cable.
Then maybe you should teach children about sex when they're most likely to be doing stupid thing with each other, instead of asking them to abstain completely, which they will not do.
ok sorry about that abortion is one of my buttons.
You have a uterus? Oh. Then you have no real say.
But then neither do I, which is why I support choice - because I have no say in the matter, but a woman should.
I didn't say that Republicans were cowardly for hiding behind the Christ, but here are my thoughts on it.
I think the "Christo-Republican" political base is in fact quite bold in it's assertion of principles, picking and choosing chapter and verse as necessary, as Jimmy Swaggart was so good at. Like Swaggart, they'll likely be forgiven time and time again as long as they duck behind an unimpeachable icon: the church.
Among other things, the Republican party and their allies in the "pay for Jesus" movement teach that old testament principles (the angry, world-destroying, testing God) should be intermingled with new testament principles (Forgiveness despite intent) by followers as they so please and dictate.
Abortion? Wrong in every case, despite intent, original sin, etc. Eye for an eye death penalty? Right in every case, despite the imperfect and often jaundiced legal system available to the poor.
As to your roads comment, it's arguable that most of those bad roads (and I agree, most have seen better days) wouldn't even be laid down if it weren't for the populist movement in Louisiana during the late '30s. Huey was many things: a drunk (or was that Earl?) a cheat, a liar...but he was also godawful poor when he was a little boy, and he knew that if he could spread the money around to his friends and make things marginally better for the little people living under the twin threats of flood and remoteness, he would be revered. And he was.
Back to the roads. The roads that I liken to Lafayette's existing dark fiber ring and proposed FTTH. (Have to stay on topic.)
Consider that the Houston->New Orleans corridor sees 1: more heavy truck traffic than most other continuous four lane interstate routes (I-5 from L.A. to San Francisco sees less heavy truck traffic.) and 2: that Louisiana Interstates and highways below Alexandria are mostly built on fill or ground that is given to subsiding, unlike the mixed swamp and prairie west of Lafayette and 3: that Louisiana has one of the highest ration of bridge (expensive to build and maintain) to bedded roads in the nation...
(By the way - the elevated freeways above the Atchfalaya Basin and Lake Ponchartrain are pretty amazing engineering feats and...did I mention Free? It's not like traffic would have a choice if they decided to make it a toll road.) The Atchafalaya Basin freeway handles more traffic than most Interstates...and it sits on 60 foot pilings.
whew. Had to catch my breath there.
I grew up in Lafayette. Rather, I grew up in Carencro, a few miles north, but since two Interstates cross in Lafayette (I-10 and I-49) more people know where it is. I spent much of my childhood there, since both my parents worked in "town".
Louisiana, despite the craven Christo-Republicanism currently grippping the state, has long and deep populist roots. Louisiana was one of the first states to have free textbooks for public school kids, and during a time when the state's agricultural base was in tatters, Huey Long rode to success on taxing the oil companies who were then punching a hole in the mud wherever they could, and using the money (well, most of it, anyway, or whatever didn't fall under the table) to build roads across the waterways that divided the state.
John Breaux and Bennet Johnson continued this tradition on the federal level to a certain extent; while Louisiana never had a large Air Force, Army, or Navy presence, and missed out on much of the Space Race southern welfare programs of the 60s, the state did get some heap-big federal dollars for I-10 across the Atchafalaya, I-55 through Manchac, and I-49 from Lafayette to Alexandria, which was one of the largest earthmoving projects in Insterstate highway history, and opened a remote part of the state to high speed travel, cutting the time from Lafayette to Alexandria to just under two hours in 1999 from a little under five hours in 1980.
Because of the infrastructure building, Louisiana is a far, far different place today. Lafayette's vote is a reflection of the very deeply-held Louisiana belief that big comanies get their money from the citizens anyway; why shouldn't we try to build one ourselves, with our money, and do it better?
Lafayette, by the way, has one of the best public utility systems around. LUS has always been self-sustaining, sells power to other utilities to lower ratepayer burden, and Lafayette is one of the cities that when hit by a hurricane, always amanges to get the power back on within a few days. They've also done an amazing job of cleaning up the neglected Vermilion river.
I'm proud to be from there, especially with the outcome of this vote, and the margin.
Go Cajuns!
The fact that the article you cite is based on analysts' predictions made before the earnings announcement numbers I cited were announced...well, doesn't say much for your reading comprehension, friend. But you didn't read the article you linked to anyway, did you?
The article you cited is titled "Apple May Say Earnings Jumped, IPod Shipments Fell in 3rd-Qtr". The big giveaway is the word "may" the title of the article; Bloomberg's story was about what analysts were speculating Apple would say later in the day. Turns out that the analysts (as they so often are with Apple) were wrong.
Forgive me for being a little pedantic; it's just so obvous you wanted a reason to rant about iPods that I felt it appropriate to point things out in minute detail for you.