Show me proof of drastic cuts in Washington's State budget. Which programs have been eliminated? Which have been drastically cut. Name them.
And I don't mean lessening of projected increases, I mean actual cuts, where one year's budget is less than the next. And even adjust per capita.
As for DRASTIC you mean a 5-10% actual cuts this upcoming budget cycle. I think we're projected to spend 35B vs 33B in 09.
Washington like many other states doesn't have an income problem, we have a spending problem. Revenues are up per capita/inflation compared to 5,10,15, 20 years ago. We surely can run a state with the 30B+ per year can't we?
Our State Government can't seem to prioritize what's important - all the Leg seems to be doing it finding ways to piss of both small and large business's here and alienating the very citizens who pay the most of the taxes on a per person basis by finding ways to tax/extract revenue.
Show me any organization public or private, that can't find 5-10% of their budget to be cut after YEARS of increases and I'd say BS. I'm as liberal/lefty as anyone our here, but we seem to be shooting ourselves in the foot over this. Line up the priorities in a list. Line up the revenue in another. Draw a line. Simple.:)
Saw the trailer before the Bond movie last night
on
New Star Trek Trailer
·
· Score: 1
It was the 1st preview shown and basically 1/2 the audience cheered. The rest of the trailers (2012, Watchmen, The Day the Earth Stood Still and a couple of others) was met with silence or jeers (Keanu Reeves looks/sounds awful in DESS).
The group I was with, none of them Trekie fans, though basically, wow that looks cool, and the two chicas have the hots for the Spock dude. Personally I thought it rocked and can't wait to see it.
It might have been the Bond audience, or the location (downtown Seattle) as the crowd seemed full of Bond nerds and young urbanites...
I commute on a 1976 Honda CB550. Leave the car at home (I use the car rarely - just for social/trips - less wear and tear too.). 2 miles each way through downtown Seattle. My motorcycle costs are minimal - 1500.00 for the bike. No insurance (not required in WA!). 20 bucks a month or so in the tank (two fillups w/fun riding too).
I ride year round except the one or two icy days we get (rain is no problem). However, bikes ARE inherently riskier. I'm constantly dodging cages and I'm fairly sure that eventually one is going to clip me.
I don't think we really DO have more than two parties - at least that matter. The last 3rd party candidate to win a single electoral vote was George Wallace in 1968. The last guy who wasn't a R or D elected was Lincoln (Unionist, soon to be called Republican) or Zach Taylor, who was a Whig.
And it's not that much different than IE7 - though the install hosed some settings. For some reason.Net sites seem to load really fast, while others (like Slashdot for example) there's a noticable delay in loading the page and rendering the display.
Let's see, patents/copyrights are good until the death of the patent holder or copyrighter. Somehow I think every time a novelist write the great American novel or an inventor produces something amazing, they'd suddenly die of 'heart attacks' or 'brain tumors'.
I don't 100% agree - I prefer the sales tax over an income tax - as do probably the vast majority of wage earners in WA. To me it seems the fairest to all.
It's simple, want to pay less in taxes? Buy less crap. There's a direct correlation between my spending habits and my tax bill. And though it IS regressive, at least in my State EVERYONE pays something to the State coffers. With an income tax, those who use government services the most generally pay NOTHING. At least with a sales tax low wage earners contribute to the whole. Seems fair to me.
And I absolutely don't think we're overtaxed here in WA. I grew up in CT, lived in Baltimore and DC and the taxes on the East coast are crazy compared to out here - in Baltimore I had Federal income, State income, County, City, Neighborhood (http://www.charlesvillage.org/), property AND a sale tax. Plus property taxes are way less out here.
Growing up in CT, we lost the sales tax and did an income and slowly the sales tax creeped up again, so the sales tax is where is was when I left the state, expect now there's an income tax on top of that. I still remember Lowell Weicker passing the tax change and a the huge protest rally at the State capital.
But I do agree with the comments on the B&O tax. I'd almost rather see an even larger sales tax and somehow make that a little more fair. Finally, I'd wouldn't trade our economy with just about any other state - sure there are issues, but Washington's been a pretty good move for me and people continue to move here for jobs/quality of life.
Agreed - the Helio actually is faster, but the web browser is CLUNKY compared to the iphone - I really don't care about the network, I do care about if I can even view a webpage.
Social networking integration - Helio has it ("Myspace integration"), Apple doesn't.
Myspace on Helio is a joke, as is all the pre-canned web apps - see above the iphone is superior in every way surfing the net
GPS/map/social networking Helio has it ("Buddy Beacon"), Apple doesn't even have GPS.
The GPS on the Ocean IS the killer APP - I use it every day and it's slick and works well
Video camera Helio has it, Apple doesn't.
The video and camera on the Ocean sucks. It constantly locks up, and the picture quality is poor
Music downloads Helio does them over the air, Apple doesn't.
The music player on the Helio sucks. I bought a 2GB card and TRIED to load some tunes on it. It would choke on the amount of media. I could load a few songs on the card, (and I tried mult cards) but it just wasn't usable.
Helio also has much more Web integration (IM, POP email, RSS, etc.) than the iPhone. The problem is that they had to put a pop-out QWERTY keyboard in the thing to deal with all the web stuff.
The keyboard on the OCEAN rocks. I can text/email very fast, and I can't imagine using a touch screen.
This all said, I'll probably get an iphone when my contract expires.
That kind of thing is happening everywhere - but it doesn't mean businesses AREN'T upgrading - it just means they're doing it in planned approach.
PCs get purchased all the time - OS upgrades only happen in a carefully planned and generally phased approach in medium and large company's.
I work for a large shop (8000+ desktops) and we're constantly buying new PCs - and our default image is still windows 2000. As new boxes get bought, they're wiped, imaged and deployed.
We are planning a summer 08 Vista upgrade enterprise-wide. It's a huge effort and has been in the planning stages for many months. We'll start rolling it out in July and eventually have it done by the end of the year. But the purchase/deploy iteration won't change - new machine comes in, gets wiped, and imaged with whatever the company standard footprint is.
So I'm not sure how you'd count our shop - sure - we're going to Vista - but even though we probably purchased 2500+ PCs this year with Vista on them, our OS count in production is still zero until July 08.
One effect of this deployment is a fairly huge PC purchase - we'll need to replace a large percentage of our PC pool to allow us to run Vista.
The other effect is and what I think is driving this more than the OS is Office. Our users use Sharepoint, MS communicator, soon Groove and other MS products and they want a newer/better versions of Outlook and Word (the two tools used most here).
On a motorcycle trip a few summers ago, we turned up the same road the Kim family went up. After about 500 yards in we all pulled over and got maps out to double check we didn't take a wrong turn - it didn't even seem like a road - more like a golf cart path. The road was in fairly bad shape and by the time we got up and over and found the next town, we nicknamed it the 'death road'.
I can't imagine ever taking that thing in the winter, during a storm. I feel for the Kim's - just a split decision that cost him his life.
I have a Helio ocean with built in GPS and Google Maps. The Google Maps implementation on Helio (not sure what other providers use) is a Java app I think - it's nicely done
I use the mapping feature nearly every day. So for example, I can plug in an address, get directions from where I am via the GPS and even simply press a button to call - I do this all the time with restaurants - find it, start driving to it and call to see how the wait is.
I have a 2 Gig SD card and I've basically use my phone as a (large) shuffle.. Granted the iPhone is cooler, and UI is better. Larger screen. ect.
I'm happy with my phone and Helio's service (so far) has been good. I use the maps/gps/direction thing almost every day - not nearly a true GPS, but I'm able to do the directions things in the car (no, not while i'm driving) or in a bar looking for the next place to hit up.
So no complaints. I don't think i'd shell out so much for the iphone - i think when my helio plan expires in 22 months, the iphones will be much cheaper and the rest of the marketplace will be forced to raise the bar - so my choices should be good.
I'd panel the walls in a room with them and have 4 walls of porn, stupid youtube videos, sport highlights, Lost reruns, and other stupid crap running all the time.
I tend to agree - though I think fleetwood mac is a bad example - they're stood up pretty well. Most bands don't.
I find my own listening library from the 80s funny now - there are few if any artists that stand the test of time - stuff that sounded good with my mohawk, safety pin in the nose days vs me in my 40s. I had tons of albums, then CDs that simply sound horrible today and I'm wondering now just what was I thinking. I can think of very little stuff from my youth that still sounds good:
Bowie
Talking Heads
Clash
Police
X
Galaxy 500
Joy Division/New Order
Even Elvis C, who was a god to me in high school sounds a bit silly to me now, and don't get me started on the reggae/ska stuff/synth/new wave stuff.. Man everything Sid Viscous and Joey Ramone seemed so IMPORTANT to me at the time..... And Sioux seemed so hot... and all of those synth boy bands were...cool? sigh..
is the accuracy of them and how they deal with individual state laws regarding protection and destruction of data. I personally have no problem with these databases - ALL of the information in them are in the public record - except case information that is sealed by a judge.
One issue of concern would be and example where I get busted at 17 for a petty crime - do my probation and some community service and have my record expunged. As far as the State is concerned, my record is now clean and the arrest shouldn't appear anywhere. The state system, by law, has to actually destroy both the paper record of the case and any data trails in the local case management systems.
What doesn't happen, I'm afraid, is when the FBI or Justice department grabs data via an exchange - it's not cleaning up or even being able to know about the expunged action - they just grab whatever they get and add it to the pile of stuff they transform - it's just has an old record of a closed or completed case.
Another issue is sealed cases - or cases that have been exchanged with these databases, THEN sealed at a later date, or has information about minors in it, or financial data in it (i.e. a divorce case might have bank records, ssn's and so forth). The intent of adding notes and other stuff to a docket for example is to help the judge, and any other official manage the case - what's not considered is the downstream effect of this (ie the document is scanned and it's added as a blob to the case record, then exchanged with a foreign system.
I see a big backlash coming, much like medical records and privacy in the legal realm - I agree that giving officers in the field all the data they need is critical, but there needs to be updates to rules and regs about how this stuff is used and what exactly can be exchanged now that the data won't merely live in the original systems and safeguarded by disinterested parties (the nerds who manage the statewide court systems) vs those who have a financial or other reason to be interested in the data.
I used to be the IT lead for the Peace Corps overseas computing unit - we supported small, remote offices and sub-offices in nearly every developmentally challenged place in the world: 92 countries (and at the time - 1998-2001 Peace Corps was a 100% Mac OS shop - over 2000 worldwide).
I can tell you that this type of computer is going to be a huge hit, especially in the urban areas. There's a huge untapped market for a product in this price range and huge potential. A lot of families have the money (at least in the cities) to afford a unit at that cost and they will purchase them for their kids - education is a huge priority and a lot of parents want to get as many modern tools in the hands of their kids as possible.
I have a lot of experience supporting equipment in places where these things are being considered, and a lot of the comments are spot on - the elements are extremely hard on any equipment (dust, humidity) as well as power surges. I'm not as concerned about dealing with curricula or proper usage - kids overseas are the same as they are here - they'll figure out creative meaningful ways to use these things and schools/families will figure out meaningful ways to teach/make them valuable learning tools. Don't assume just because folks are dirt poor they don't get it.
I remember taking my Powerbook overseas all the time into the bush in Africa, out to Mongolia, or in the South Pacific - it took a beating but always worked. We also considered (and I traveled a bit with) the eMates (http://www.msu.edu/~luckie/gallery/emate300.htm) - which are sort of the same thing - I loved that thing and it was really rugged. To me the bigger hurdle is not so much hardware, but connectivity - a 100 dollar laptop that can't get to the internet cheaply isn't as valuable. If this can be combined with cheap broadband access, then you won't be able to make them fast enough.
Back in 2001 I signed up for a long distance provider online and got 3 cents a minute for all calls on my LAN phone. I rarely use it for LD (use my cell), so 4 1/2 years later, I've accumulated $3.11 of long distance phone calls - the provider won't run my credit card until I reach 5 bucks of charges.
Each month I get online (no paper) bill from them telling me I'm going to get billed some day.
Do you expect a guy with a PHD to understand how to fix his toaster if it's busted or his blender? Computers are becoming the same thing - simple appliances that do a few things well (surf the web, write a document).
It's "small penis".
People who are good spellers scream out "Warning: I never get laid, I'm an uptight asshole and I like to correct others. Oh, and I have a small penis".
Editors, this goes for you too.
Government has always properly used Eminent Domain for projects that are for the public good, or used by the public.
I don't think anyone can argue that Goverment shouldn't be able to use this power to build stuff for the public good - else, there'd be not a single road or train track in existance in our country. True, building a shiny new stadium 'might' not be viewed as a public issue, but generally these are paid for w/bonds or other public means so at least the voter has some input.
What happened today is completely different - basically it's saying government can take property for the private good - one party over another. It get's worse when you consider that same government benefits from their desicion financially.
Every beachfront property holder who doesn't own a McMansion or lives in any kind of desirable property should be concerned - we're running out a nice lots to build on, no worry, we'll kick granda bessy out of her nice house so we can build a new one for 10 times the taxes.
This basically trashes the 5th amendment.
Be afraid.
You forgot about the wireless / poo action on the toilet. My ThinkPad x31 at +- 3lb makes it handy for reading and I can still wipe my bum without having to lug a brick around.
I'm no fan of our President, but any position that he can appoint - a schedule C person - anyone in the Plumb book - old version from 1996 - I can't find the most recent one
is up for grabs - so basically any President should and does appoint whom he wants - this is our spoils system that has worked for both Dems and R's. I'm not sure what all the bitching is about.
I remember the day after Bush Sr lost my boss (who was a Schedule C) was in a state of shock (we at the Peace Corps where I worked had a grand time pulling down the Bush Sr and Dan Quayle photos that were on the wall) - she was forced to resign and someone from the Clinton transition team came over and eventually all of the Clinton flunkies from the campaign were on board.
Even if an R wins in 2008, all of the Bush Jr folks will go - it's not about party, it's about the person and rewarding those who helped you win - so surrounding yourself with a few thousand like minded people in a pool of millions of federal employees isn't the end of the world - the solution is to get your guy/girl in office and not to bitch about who Bush wants around him. Anything that's not Senate comfirmable should be his choice. Next time think more clearly about your vote (or not voting) if you don't like his choices.
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And I don't mean lessening of projected increases, I mean actual cuts, where one year's budget is less than the next. And even adjust per capita.
As for DRASTIC you mean a 5-10% actual cuts this upcoming budget cycle. I think we're projected to spend 35B vs 33B in 09.
Washington like many other states doesn't have an income problem, we have a spending problem. Revenues are up per capita/inflation compared to 5,10,15, 20 years ago. We surely can run a state with the 30B+ per year can't we?
Our State Government can't seem to prioritize what's important - all the Leg seems to be doing it finding ways to piss of both small and large business's here and alienating the very citizens who pay the most of the taxes on a per person basis by finding ways to tax/extract revenue.
Show me any organization public or private, that can't find 5-10% of their budget to be cut after YEARS of increases and I'd say BS. I'm as liberal/lefty as anyone our here, but we seem to be shooting ourselves in the foot over this. Line up the priorities in a list. Line up the revenue in another. Draw a line. Simple. :)
The group I was with, none of them Trekie fans, though basically, wow that looks cool, and the two chicas have the hots for the Spock dude. Personally I thought it rocked and can't wait to see it.
It might have been the Bond audience, or the location (downtown Seattle) as the crowd seemed full of Bond nerds and young urbanites...
I commute on a 1976 Honda CB550. Leave the car at home (I use the car rarely - just for social/trips - less wear and tear too.). 2 miles each way through downtown Seattle. My motorcycle costs are minimal - 1500.00 for the bike. No insurance (not required in WA!). 20 bucks a month or so in the tank (two fillups w/fun riding too). I ride year round except the one or two icy days we get (rain is no problem). However, bikes ARE inherently riskier. I'm constantly dodging cages and I'm fairly sure that eventually one is going to clip me.
I don't think we really DO have more than two parties - at least that matter. The last 3rd party candidate to win a single electoral vote was George Wallace in 1968. The last guy who wasn't a R or D elected was Lincoln (Unionist, soon to be called Republican) or Zach Taylor, who was a Whig.
And it's not that much different than IE7 - though the install hosed some settings. For some reason .Net sites seem to load really fast, while others (like Slashdot for example) there's a noticable delay in loading the page and rendering the display.
Let's see, patents/copyrights are good until the death of the patent holder or copyrighter. Somehow I think every time a novelist write the great American novel or an inventor produces something amazing, they'd suddenly die of 'heart attacks' or 'brain tumors'.
It's simple, want to pay less in taxes? Buy less crap. There's a direct correlation between my spending habits and my tax bill. And though it IS regressive, at least in my State EVERYONE pays something to the State coffers. With an income tax, those who use government services the most generally pay NOTHING. At least with a sales tax low wage earners contribute to the whole. Seems fair to me.
And I absolutely don't think we're overtaxed here in WA. I grew up in CT, lived in Baltimore and DC and the taxes on the East coast are crazy compared to out here - in Baltimore I had Federal income, State income, County, City, Neighborhood (http://www.charlesvillage.org/), property AND a sale tax. Plus property taxes are way less out here.
Growing up in CT, we lost the sales tax and did an income and slowly the sales tax creeped up again, so the sales tax is where is was when I left the state, expect now there's an income tax on top of that. I still remember Lowell Weicker passing the tax change and a the huge protest rally at the State capital.
But I do agree with the comments on the B&O tax. I'd almost rather see an even larger sales tax and somehow make that a little more fair. Finally, I'd wouldn't trade our economy with just about any other state - sure there are issues, but Washington's been a pretty good move for me and people continue to move here for jobs/quality of life.
3G networking - Helio has it, Apple doesn't.
Agreed - the Helio actually is faster, but the web browser is CLUNKY compared to the iphone - I really don't care about the network, I do care about if I can even view a webpage.
Social networking integration - Helio has it ("Myspace integration"), Apple doesn't.
Myspace on Helio is a joke, as is all the pre-canned web apps - see above the iphone is superior in every way surfing the net
GPS/map/social networking Helio has it ("Buddy Beacon"), Apple doesn't even have GPS.
The GPS on the Ocean IS the killer APP - I use it every day and it's slick and works well
Video camera Helio has it, Apple doesn't.
The video and camera on the Ocean sucks. It constantly locks up, and the picture quality is poor
Music downloads Helio does them over the air, Apple doesn't.
The music player on the Helio sucks. I bought a 2GB card and TRIED to load some tunes on it. It would choke on the amount of media. I could load a few songs on the card, (and I tried mult cards) but it just wasn't usable.
Helio also has much more Web integration (IM, POP email, RSS, etc.) than the iPhone. The problem is that they had to put a pop-out QWERTY keyboard in the thing to deal with all the web stuff.
The keyboard on the OCEAN rocks. I can text/email very fast, and I can't imagine using a touch screen.
This all said, I'll probably get an iphone when my contract expires.
PCs get purchased all the time - OS upgrades only happen in a carefully planned and generally phased approach in medium and large company's.
I work for a large shop (8000+ desktops) and we're constantly buying new PCs - and our default image is still windows 2000. As new boxes get bought, they're wiped, imaged and deployed.
We are planning a summer 08 Vista upgrade enterprise-wide. It's a huge effort and has been in the planning stages for many months. We'll start rolling it out in July and eventually have it done by the end of the year. But the purchase/deploy iteration won't change - new machine comes in, gets wiped, and imaged with whatever the company standard footprint is.
So I'm not sure how you'd count our shop - sure - we're going to Vista - but even though we probably purchased 2500+ PCs this year with Vista on them, our OS count in production is still zero until July 08.
One effect of this deployment is a fairly huge PC purchase - we'll need to replace a large percentage of our PC pool to allow us to run Vista.
The other effect is and what I think is driving this more than the OS is Office. Our users use Sharepoint, MS communicator, soon Groove and other MS products and they want a newer/better versions of Outlook and Word (the two tools used most here).
On a motorcycle trip a few summers ago, we turned up the same road the Kim family went up. After about 500 yards in we all pulled over and got maps out to double check we didn't take a wrong turn - it didn't even seem like a road - more like a golf cart path. The road was in fairly bad shape and by the time we got up and over and found the next town, we nicknamed it the 'death road'. I can't imagine ever taking that thing in the winter, during a storm. I feel for the Kim's - just a split decision that cost him his life.
I have a Helio ocean with built in GPS and Google Maps. The Google Maps implementation on Helio (not sure what other providers use) is a Java app I think - it's nicely done I use the mapping feature nearly every day. So for example, I can plug in an address, get directions from where I am via the GPS and even simply press a button to call - I do this all the time with restaurants - find it, start driving to it and call to see how the wait is.
- 500 minutes voice
- Unlimited Data
- Unlimited Text
- GoogleMaps/GPS
60 Bucks a month.I have a 2 Gig SD card and I've basically use my phone as a (large) shuffle.. Granted the iPhone is cooler, and UI is better. Larger screen. ect.
I'm happy with my phone and Helio's service (so far) has been good. I use the maps/gps/direction thing almost every day - not nearly a true GPS, but I'm able to do the directions things in the car (no, not while i'm driving) or in a bar looking for the next place to hit up.
So no complaints. I don't think i'd shell out so much for the iphone - i think when my helio plan expires in 22 months, the iphones will be much cheaper and the rest of the marketplace will be forced to raise the bar - so my choices should be good.
Dollars per mile. That's all that matters.
I'd panel the walls in a room with them and have 4 walls of porn, stupid youtube videos, sport highlights, Lost reruns, and other stupid crap running all the time.
I tend to agree - though I think fleetwood mac is a bad example - they're stood up pretty well. Most bands don't. I find my own listening library from the 80s funny now - there are few if any artists that stand the test of time - stuff that sounded good with my mohawk, safety pin in the nose days vs me in my 40s. I had tons of albums, then CDs that simply sound horrible today and I'm wondering now just what was I thinking. I can think of very little stuff from my youth that still sounds good: Bowie Talking Heads Clash Police X Galaxy 500 Joy Division/New Order Even Elvis C, who was a god to me in high school sounds a bit silly to me now, and don't get me started on the reggae/ska stuff/synth/new wave stuff.. Man everything Sid Viscous and Joey Ramone seemed so IMPORTANT to me at the time..... And Sioux seemed so hot... and all of those synth boy bands were...cool? sigh..
One issue of concern would be and example where I get busted at 17 for a petty crime - do my probation and some community service and have my record expunged. As far as the State is concerned, my record is now clean and the arrest shouldn't appear anywhere. The state system, by law, has to actually destroy both the paper record of the case and any data trails in the local case management systems.
What doesn't happen, I'm afraid, is when the FBI or Justice department grabs data via an exchange - it's not cleaning up or even being able to know about the expunged action - they just grab whatever they get and add it to the pile of stuff they transform - it's just has an old record of a closed or completed case.
Another issue is sealed cases - or cases that have been exchanged with these databases, THEN sealed at a later date, or has information about minors in it, or financial data in it (i.e. a divorce case might have bank records, ssn's and so forth). The intent of adding notes and other stuff to a docket for example is to help the judge, and any other official manage the case - what's not considered is the downstream effect of this (ie the document is scanned and it's added as a blob to the case record, then exchanged with a foreign system.
I see a big backlash coming, much like medical records and privacy in the legal realm - I agree that giving officers in the field all the data they need is critical, but there needs to be updates to rules and regs about how this stuff is used and what exactly can be exchanged now that the data won't merely live in the original systems and safeguarded by disinterested parties (the nerds who manage the statewide court systems) vs those who have a financial or other reason to be interested in the data.
You want American to wax our bungholes with our 'voting system'?!
I can tell you that this type of computer is going to be a huge hit, especially in the urban areas. There's a huge untapped market for a product in this price range and huge potential. A lot of families have the money (at least in the cities) to afford a unit at that cost and they will purchase them for their kids - education is a huge priority and a lot of parents want to get as many modern tools in the hands of their kids as possible.
I have a lot of experience supporting equipment in places where these things are being considered, and a lot of the comments are spot on - the elements are extremely hard on any equipment (dust, humidity) as well as power surges. I'm not as concerned about dealing with curricula or proper usage - kids overseas are the same as they are here - they'll figure out creative meaningful ways to use these things and schools/families will figure out meaningful ways to teach/make them valuable learning tools. Don't assume just because folks are dirt poor they don't get it.
I remember taking my Powerbook overseas all the time into the bush in Africa, out to Mongolia, or in the South Pacific - it took a beating but always worked. We also considered (and I traveled a bit with) the eMates (http://www.msu.edu/~luckie/gallery/emate300.htm) - which are sort of the same thing - I loved that thing and it was really rugged. To me the bigger hurdle is not so much hardware, but connectivity - a 100 dollar laptop that can't get to the internet cheaply isn't as valuable. If this can be combined with cheap broadband access, then you won't be able to make them fast enough.
Each month I get online (no paper) bill from them telling me I'm going to get billed some day.
Do you expect a guy with a PHD to understand how to fix his toaster if it's busted or his blender? Computers are becoming the same thing - simple appliances that do a few things well (surf the web, write a document).
It's "small penis". People who are good spellers scream out "Warning: I never get laid, I'm an uptight asshole and I like to correct others. Oh, and I have a small penis". Editors, this goes for you too.
Government has always properly used Eminent Domain for projects that are for the public good, or used by the public. I don't think anyone can argue that Goverment shouldn't be able to use this power to build stuff for the public good - else, there'd be not a single road or train track in existance in our country. True, building a shiny new stadium 'might' not be viewed as a public issue, but generally these are paid for w/bonds or other public means so at least the voter has some input. What happened today is completely different - basically it's saying government can take property for the private good - one party over another. It get's worse when you consider that same government benefits from their desicion financially. Every beachfront property holder who doesn't own a McMansion or lives in any kind of desirable property should be concerned - we're running out a nice lots to build on, no worry, we'll kick granda bessy out of her nice house so we can build a new one for 10 times the taxes. This basically trashes the 5th amendment. Be afraid.
You forgot about the wireless / poo action on the toilet. My ThinkPad x31 at +- 3lb makes it handy for reading and I can still wipe my bum without having to lug a brick around.
Yeah, but chicks dig the bikes. I ride a 2001 Moto Guzzi Jackel.. and Subaru. My Subaru is great for the boarding action, but nothing beats my bike.
(http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plumbook/1996/index.html )
is up for grabs - so basically any President should and does appoint whom he wants - this is our spoils system that has worked for both Dems and R's. I'm not sure what all the bitching is about.
I remember the day after Bush Sr lost my boss (who was a Schedule C) was in a state of shock (we at the Peace Corps where I worked had a grand time pulling down the Bush Sr and Dan Quayle photos that were on the wall) - she was forced to resign and someone from the Clinton transition team came over and eventually all of the Clinton flunkies from the campaign were on board.
Even if an R wins in 2008, all of the Bush Jr folks will go - it's not about party, it's about the person and rewarding those who helped you win - so surrounding yourself with a few thousand like minded people in a pool of millions of federal employees isn't the end of the world - the solution is to get your guy/girl in office and not to bitch about who Bush wants around him. Anything that's not Senate comfirmable should be his choice. Next time think more clearly about your vote (or not voting) if you don't like his choices.