I don't know that they "turned off" features so that they could charge for them so much as they chose to use the same firmware for two similar cameras to save money on both and they removed the "pro-only" features from the latter to make it less confusing. After all, the 1D is still a sturdier camera with a better lens, faster memory transfer, better ergonomics, etc.
I have bought several Fuji digital cameras and have noticed that the software on all of them is about the same, minus a few features here and there. But they're always features that, in the market segment said camera is marketted to, would only confuse the user. Does the owner of a pocket-sized point and click digital really need tight control over white balance and ISO settings -- or are they just going to run in full auto mode anyway?
Confused people tie up the customer support lines with questions they shouldn't need answers to. Keep it simple.
Right. And you'll see a lot more of this happening as minute segments of broader markets command features in their devices others might not want. Ideally, they shouldn't provide the software to perform these functions at all, since you haven't paid for the development of them. But it's probably easier, both from a support standpoint and a feature delivery standpoint, to give you EVERYTHING and then block access to what you didn't buy.
Of course, the price businesses must pay for this convenience is the possibility that somebody will slice through their protection. But this is something all software manufacturers must face. Nowadays, no matter what controls you impose on offline software it generally appears in the hands of pirates before it arrives at stores. So why fight it? Put a simple lock out in place to prevent honest people from using features they haven't paid for yet.
How does allowing you to copy software from a disk to your computer VIOLATE Microsoft's copyright?
Having copyrights on something means you have the rights to control how it is copied. They allow you to copy it once. That doesn't give you the right to copy it umpteen times. If they want to give you that right, they can.
Copyrights are all about preserving the economic viability of works in a marketplace, so the first person who receives your work doesn't clone it and sell it for cheaper. Fair use laws exist to allow you to do what you like with the work, so long as it doesn't significantly impact their right to market the work. Obviously, installing a disk you've just purchased doesn't effect economic viability, so you'd be fine there. Just like you'd be fine using this hack EVEN under the DMCA, as it doesn't circumvent a copy protection scheme.
The 1.8T is downgraded not to promote "faster" engines on other cars, but as a warranty protection. As a result of different drivetrain stresses and intake channels, different cars provide different optimum performance with the same engine. The drivetrain on the Audi is much stronger than that on the Golf, and the intake manifold larger (and with a bigger intercooler i think) so they can tune up the engine to output more. Similarly, in countries that have stronger legal protection outside of warranty, they de-tune the engine to protect themselves...that turbocharger is an expensive part to replace out of pocket.
Incidentally, the best example of this was with the Audi A4 and Passat back in 2001...when the passat put out 170 hp and the Audi 190 hp on the same exact hardware. The Passat was $5000-$7000 less, but it also didn't have as many standard features (still quite a few though)...I bought the Passat because after slapping the APR chip in I gained about 35 hp, 40+ ft/lbs of torque AND better fuel economy (as my crusing RPMs were significantly lower).
We keep trying to bring the wives to the LAN party, so they can talk with each other and not be bored at home getting pissed at us. It doesn't work...they just wind up bored, together, and we all catch shit on the way home. Now I can't mention going out without getting "this isn't another dumb boy video game party again, is it?"
Women, in my experience, don't care what you do: if it's outside of the house, and they're not there, it's stupid and they hate it. I don't drink to excess. I don't hang out at seedy clubs. But I have, over the past two years, been harangued needlessly for: watching wrestling, going to a LAN party, playing poker, role playing, going to an open mic blues jam, going to a trivia game at a bar, using my computer in the house, going to a comic shop, having lunch with a male friend, watching a hockey game, playing dreamcast in the house, staying at work late, fixing the exhaust on her car, and going to the gym. Yes, I have actually gotten flack for GOING to the GYM to work off my fat gut.
"Why can't you work out at home?" Because the $10k in equpiment I use is at the Gym. The $5 handweights I bought for use at the computer are all well and good, but they don't help me get stronger and they do shit for cardio.
My buddy got two things last week: a new baby and a copy of City of Heroes.
His wife is a little worried about this...but I don't think she needs to be. He's not the most repsonsible guy on the planet, but he's pretty good too. We went out to buy a new video card, he remembered to get the enfamil and pampers as well. When the baby wakes him up at night, he logs in and plays for a while, rocking it to sleep. He's also learned how to play while distracted.
Of course, the women folk are completely unimpressed by his multitasking. Apparently, it's reckless to hold a baby whilst fighting a horde of minions, but it's okay to hold a baby while ironing or boiling sausages. I don't get it myself, but then again my dad was a gamer. He beat Zelda before I did.
Au contraire. People not caring about the environment are why gas is $2.00 per gallon. Otherwise, we'd have instituted better CAFE laws, resulting in a target economy higher than 27 mpg. Nowadays, you can get that in a car with 260+ horsepower...imagine that efficiency in a much smaller, SANER engine. Back in the '60s, people got where they had to go at 70 MPH in engines with less than 100 horsepower...sometimes as little as 48 (the VW Beetle, which gets 25-27 MPG btw).
When you engineer, you engineer to increase a variable within a constraint. You don't increase all variables at the same rate. Right now, the constraint for economy is 27 MPG, and the desire variable is horsepower (people equate horsepower with "better engine," so hp sells cars). If instead the constraint was 150 hp, and the desired variable was economy, you'd see a lot of really efficient cars.
People would never notice the difference. So what if it takes an extra second to get up to 60 MPH when you're flat out?
Okay. So add the 24.4 cents on to the 41 he's paying now. You get $65.4, which you have to admit is LOWER than the $2.10 diesel accross the street from my office.
There are different types of vegetable oils. Your argument that it takes more fuel to process the vegetable into oil is true for corn, which is hard to process, but it is not true for soy or rapeseed, which are considerably easier. The figures from the DOE -- even POST Bush -- seem to indicate that biodiesel can be made for a cost of 1:3.2 or something like that (you can google for the doc, it's after 5 so I ain't doing it).
The only reason we tried this with corn in the first place is that America grows a lot of corn, most of which winds up subsidized. Cheap fuel would certainly be preferrable to plants that get thrown out...so spin the numbers just right, and you get a "renewable" fuel source for your subsidy dollar instead of "useless compost."
Because you can't believe everything you read in High Times magazine. Hemp is a decent crop, but it requires a LOT of proceessing before it becomes anything. Good for paper, kind of shitty for cloth (compared to cotton...it takes more effort to process it to a comfortable state) and TERRIBLE for oil compared to soy, rapeseed, or even the hard-to-process crops like corn.
This is why hemp plants are only grown in limited quantities outside the US as well...it's not the lifesaver NORML wants you to think it is. And while it's a good multitasker, each of those tasks is better served by some other plant that requires less energy to grow and process.
I'd say it's a good way to get out of a ticket. Especially if you pick up a dozen at each fill up. Shit, with the money you save, you could buy 4 dozen with the savings on one tankfull!
Well...since diesel fuel burns more efficiently overall, you can expect about 25% better fuel economy in a diesel engine than in a gasoline engine. For example, the volkswagen 2.0 L inline 4 gets about 30 mpg, whereas that 1.9L turbodiesel gets around 40.
And whereas "most cars" don't need anything better than regular grade, this is only because their ECU software is not aware of the better gas. My car -- with its standard inline 4 turbocharger and stock injection -- has been modified with a high quality boost chip which is much more sensitive to fuel grade. I can actually feel -- and record in my gas log -- the difference between 91, 93 and 94 octanes. With 94, I can expect regular highway milage above 35 mpg -- along with 215 hp and about 166 ft-lbs of torque when I really put the hammer to it. It's enough to tow my boat, whizzing by SUVs...and still getting 30+ mpg. 28 with the AC on.
In the Autoweek review of the Honda Insight, the reviewer called getting as high fuel economy as possible "a different kind of performance;" he even talked about how he'd "race" the other reviewers to see who could get the highest numbers on the machine's average estimated economy gauge. As gas gets more expensive, more and more gearheads are going to put fuel performance numbers right next to their quarter mile times...
You could just -- I don't know -- turn the fucking thing off while driving. My voice mail message actually says "I'm either out of the calling area or driving...leave a message." I'm distracted enough by the iPod, and that's made for one handed operation (and only gets picked up once every hour or so, to skip over the skits on hip-hop records).
So how come we don't see similar bandwidth numbers in large American cities like New York or LA? They're very dense and have a miniscule physical area compared to the rest of the country, a market of 7 million+ potential subscribers, and yet until quite recently you couldn't even get cable internet in NYC!
Here's the thing though. Do you expect software development to stop after you buy it? Or do you expect continued support on the product ad infinitum -- if there's a problem, do you expect it fixed? If there's a new feature, do you expect to receive it?
A lot of people do. Every time a company releases a version X, users of version X - 1 complain that they don't get it for free. People love to complain about Microsoft's dropping support for older products because they still use them...even when the products are 6+ YEARS old. This is a bit senseless from the company's point of view...supporting a product for the infinite future when you make no current revenues from said support is wasting money.
Software subscriptions would be a great way to support what people want -- continued development -- with the OTHER thing they want -- low up front pricing. This sort of thing happens all the time with business licensing. For example, we pay $2700 a year for Micrsoft's MSDN subscription, which basically gives me ALL of Microsoft's software, all versions and whatever, that I might need in the course of my development work. Seems expensive, but compare it with the cost of EVERY Microsoft product for a year and it's a real bargain. Shit, just being able to test a remote installation of SQL Server 7 on Win 2000 terminal Server without having to buy either is worth it.
Except you neglect to mention that free software probably will not run on free hardware. And since the free hardware will be in greater demand, the non-free hardware will be more expensive -- a phenomenon mac users understand all too well.
Ergo, you can expect to spend quite a bit of money to run your free software. Which means fewer people will be interested in using it. Do more work and pay more money for less functionality? Not me.
Not necessarily a problem. Just something to think about. It has become more expensive to make your own stereo from components than it would be to just buy one. Ergo, only a scant few folks make their own.
My Grendel cluster will beat your Beowulf cluster.
Let me just say: as someone who has taken 16 credit hours in Old English literature, this is a hilarious sig. Though to be honest, the Beowulf cluster would beat both the Grendel cluster and the mother of all Grendel clusters...and then lose to the Dragon cluster, which I believe uses G5s.
Re:No need to re-invent the wheel
on
Open Maps?
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· Score: 1
If you are in NY, like I said there are 30 ft orthoimages for nearly the entire state. That means 1 pixel == 1 yard of space. Pretty detailed...6 pixels for my car in colour, damnit! You can also get free 1 foot contour maps in DLG format from the USGS...combine the two, and you can get a pretty keen flyover of your area. Stick that in your copy of X-Plane...
There have been a lot of good absurdist comedy series on American TV in recent years, many of them originating on Fox. Besides the obvious cartoons (Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy), there's Malcolm in the Middle and the new Ron Howard series "Arrested Development," which is, simply put, a stroke of genius. Like M.A.S.H. or Frasier, only I actually laugh at it.
I would like to know where the subtlety is in the Vogons, and in most of the other Adams villains who are evil simply because they exist. Or in any of the passages where Adams seems to be saying, "Look! Look at the funny horrors that have happened due to modern hypocritical beaurocracy!" I find that this kind of subtlety hits "like a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick."
If anything separates British from American films, it's not so much the direction of the plot as it is devotion to the plot. In most American films, you see the plot, you grab on to it, and it is the sole driving force for everything the characters do. Wheras in most British films, plot is more of an afterthought to explain why the characters are doing anything in the first place. The plot is there to eventually tie the next segment in with this one. It can be very disjointed...try following the plot through an episode of the Young Ones, you'll see what I mean.
Who's the bigger patriot? A man who volunteered to go to war, went overseas, saw first hand combat, killed the enemy and was injured three times, who decided that the war he fought in was not accomplishing anything and needed to be stopped before more people died needlessly?
Or a man who joined the reserves, asked not to be sent overseas, and spent the war skipping out on his duty?
Not supporting an arbitrary war doesn't make you a pacifist. We're telling our troops that they are fighting to protect America's freedom. If the war proves to have no net positive effect, directly or indirectly, on our freedom, and indeed devolves into wholesale slaughter with no gains, what're you supposed to do? Keep fighting and trying to win a war nobody believes in? Or back out in shame?
Incidentally, in the past 40 years, how many generals won the presidency? How many lawyers? Are you claiming we wouldn't vote for Washington or Lincoln anymore just because they weren't governors?
What? You know, every time you use a computer there's a good chance you're supporting China as well. They make a LOT of goods over there, and the cheaply made stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. China's making some really NICE gear now, as nice as American made...stuff like the iPod, which is constructed in China of Taiwanese made parts designed in California.
There is NO WAY you can live out your day in a America without using something Chinese. Check the Craftsman tools next time you're at Sears...the steel ones are probably made in the US still, but all of the power tools are Chinese. Same with Mikita. And if you want to turn the tide, you're about twenty years too late -- we had a chance in this country to actually read and care about where our products were made, and we chose to save $50 on a VCR instead.
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I don't know that they "turned off" features so that they could charge for them so much as they chose to use the same firmware for two similar cameras to save money on both and they removed the "pro-only" features from the latter to make it less confusing. After all, the 1D is still a sturdier camera with a better lens, faster memory transfer, better ergonomics, etc.
I have bought several Fuji digital cameras and have noticed that the software on all of them is about the same, minus a few features here and there. But they're always features that, in the market segment said camera is marketted to, would only confuse the user. Does the owner of a pocket-sized point and click digital really need tight control over white balance and ISO settings -- or are they just going to run in full auto mode anyway?
Confused people tie up the customer support lines with questions they shouldn't need answers to. Keep it simple.
Right. And you'll see a lot more of this happening as minute segments of broader markets command features in their devices others might not want. Ideally, they shouldn't provide the software to perform these functions at all, since you haven't paid for the development of them. But it's probably easier, both from a support standpoint and a feature delivery standpoint, to give you EVERYTHING and then block access to what you didn't buy.
Of course, the price businesses must pay for this convenience is the possibility that somebody will slice through their protection. But this is something all software manufacturers must face. Nowadays, no matter what controls you impose on offline software it generally appears in the hands of pirates before it arrives at stores. So why fight it? Put a simple lock out in place to prevent honest people from using features they haven't paid for yet.
How does allowing you to copy software from a disk to your computer VIOLATE Microsoft's copyright?
Having copyrights on something means you have the rights to control how it is copied. They allow you to copy it once. That doesn't give you the right to copy it umpteen times. If they want to give you that right, they can.
Copyrights are all about preserving the economic viability of works in a marketplace, so the first person who receives your work doesn't clone it and sell it for cheaper. Fair use laws exist to allow you to do what you like with the work, so long as it doesn't significantly impact their right to market the work. Obviously, installing a disk you've just purchased doesn't effect economic viability, so you'd be fine there. Just like you'd be fine using this hack EVEN under the DMCA, as it doesn't circumvent a copy protection scheme.
The 1.8T is downgraded not to promote "faster" engines on other cars, but as a warranty protection. As a result of different drivetrain stresses and intake channels, different cars provide different optimum performance with the same engine. The drivetrain on the Audi is much stronger than that on the Golf, and the intake manifold larger (and with a bigger intercooler i think) so they can tune up the engine to output more. Similarly, in countries that have stronger legal protection outside of warranty, they de-tune the engine to protect themselves...that turbocharger is an expensive part to replace out of pocket.
Incidentally, the best example of this was with the Audi A4 and Passat back in 2001...when the passat put out 170 hp and the Audi 190 hp on the same exact hardware. The Passat was $5000-$7000 less, but it also didn't have as many standard features (still quite a few though)...I bought the Passat because after slapping the APR chip in I gained about 35 hp, 40+ ft/lbs of torque AND better fuel economy (as my crusing RPMs were significantly lower).
These are women who know and like each other. They just refuse to hang around in the context of nerddom. It's very frustrating.
+1, Realistic.
We keep trying to bring the wives to the LAN party, so they can talk with each other and not be bored at home getting pissed at us. It doesn't work...they just wind up bored, together, and we all catch shit on the way home. Now I can't mention going out without getting "this isn't another dumb boy video game party again, is it?"
*SIGH*. Damned if you do, laid if you don't.
Women, in my experience, don't care what you do: if it's outside of the house, and they're not there, it's stupid and they hate it. I don't drink to excess. I don't hang out at seedy clubs. But I have, over the past two years, been harangued needlessly for: watching wrestling, going to a LAN party, playing poker, role playing, going to an open mic blues jam, going to a trivia game at a bar, using my computer in the house, going to a comic shop, having lunch with a male friend, watching a hockey game, playing dreamcast in the house, staying at work late, fixing the exhaust on her car, and going to the gym. Yes, I have actually gotten flack for GOING to the GYM to work off my fat gut.
"Why can't you work out at home?" Because the $10k in equpiment I use is at the Gym. The $5 handweights I bought for use at the computer are all well and good, but they don't help me get stronger and they do shit for cardio.
My buddy got two things last week: a new baby and a copy of City of Heroes.
His wife is a little worried about this...but I don't think she needs to be. He's not the most repsonsible guy on the planet, but he's pretty good too. We went out to buy a new video card, he remembered to get the enfamil and pampers as well. When the baby wakes him up at night, he logs in and plays for a while, rocking it to sleep. He's also learned how to play while distracted.
Of course, the women folk are completely unimpressed by his multitasking. Apparently, it's reckless to hold a baby whilst fighting a horde of minions, but it's okay to hold a baby while ironing or boiling sausages. I don't get it myself, but then again my dad was a gamer. He beat Zelda before I did.
Yeah, I also lost my balls due to a wife who won't let me game all night. It was the constant use.
Au contraire. People not caring about the environment are why gas is $2.00 per gallon. Otherwise, we'd have instituted better CAFE laws, resulting in a target economy higher than 27 mpg. Nowadays, you can get that in a car with 260+ horsepower...imagine that efficiency in a much smaller, SANER engine. Back in the '60s, people got where they had to go at 70 MPH in engines with less than 100 horsepower...sometimes as little as 48 (the VW Beetle, which gets 25-27 MPG btw).
When you engineer, you engineer to increase a variable within a constraint. You don't increase all variables at the same rate. Right now, the constraint for economy is 27 MPG, and the desire variable is horsepower (people equate horsepower with "better engine," so hp sells cars). If instead the constraint was 150 hp, and the desired variable was economy, you'd see a lot of really efficient cars.
People would never notice the difference. So what if it takes an extra second to get up to 60 MPH when you're flat out?
Okay. So add the 24.4 cents on to the 41 he's paying now. You get $65.4, which you have to admit is LOWER than the $2.10 diesel accross the street from my office.
There are different types of vegetable oils. Your argument that it takes more fuel to process the vegetable into oil is true for corn, which is hard to process, but it is not true for soy or rapeseed, which are considerably easier. The figures from the DOE -- even POST Bush -- seem to indicate that biodiesel can be made for a cost of 1:3.2 or something like that (you can google for the doc, it's after 5 so I ain't doing it).
The only reason we tried this with corn in the first place is that America grows a lot of corn, most of which winds up subsidized. Cheap fuel would certainly be preferrable to plants that get thrown out...so spin the numbers just right, and you get a "renewable" fuel source for your subsidy dollar instead of "useless compost."
Because you can't believe everything you read in High Times magazine. Hemp is a decent crop, but it requires a LOT of proceessing before it becomes anything. Good for paper, kind of shitty for cloth (compared to cotton...it takes more effort to process it to a comfortable state) and TERRIBLE for oil compared to soy, rapeseed, or even the hard-to-process crops like corn.
This is why hemp plants are only grown in limited quantities outside the US as well...it's not the lifesaver NORML wants you to think it is. And while it's a good multitasker, each of those tasks is better served by some other plant that requires less energy to grow and process.
I'd say it's a good way to get out of a ticket. Especially if you pick up a dozen at each fill up. Shit, with the money you save, you could buy 4 dozen with the savings on one tankfull!
Well...since diesel fuel burns more efficiently overall, you can expect about 25% better fuel economy in a diesel engine than in a gasoline engine. For example, the volkswagen 2.0 L inline 4 gets about 30 mpg, whereas that 1.9L turbodiesel gets around 40.
And whereas "most cars" don't need anything better than regular grade, this is only because their ECU software is not aware of the better gas. My car -- with its standard inline 4 turbocharger and stock injection -- has been modified with a high quality boost chip which is much more sensitive to fuel grade. I can actually feel -- and record in my gas log -- the difference between 91, 93 and 94 octanes. With 94, I can expect regular highway milage above 35 mpg -- along with 215 hp and about 166 ft-lbs of torque when I really put the hammer to it. It's enough to tow my boat, whizzing by SUVs...and still getting 30+ mpg. 28 with the AC on.
In the Autoweek review of the Honda Insight, the reviewer called getting as high fuel economy as possible "a different kind of performance;" he even talked about how he'd "race" the other reviewers to see who could get the highest numbers on the machine's average estimated economy gauge. As gas gets more expensive, more and more gearheads are going to put fuel performance numbers right next to their quarter mile times...
You could just -- I don't know -- turn the fucking thing off while driving. My voice mail message actually says "I'm either out of the calling area or driving...leave a message." I'm distracted enough by the iPod, and that's made for one handed operation (and only gets picked up once every hour or so, to skip over the skits on hip-hop records).
So how come we don't see similar bandwidth numbers in large American cities like New York or LA? They're very dense and have a miniscule physical area compared to the rest of the country, a market of 7 million+ potential subscribers, and yet until quite recently you couldn't even get cable internet in NYC!
Here's the thing though. Do you expect software development to stop after you buy it? Or do you expect continued support on the product ad infinitum -- if there's a problem, do you expect it fixed? If there's a new feature, do you expect to receive it?
A lot of people do. Every time a company releases a version X, users of version X - 1 complain that they don't get it for free. People love to complain about Microsoft's dropping support for older products because they still use them...even when the products are 6+ YEARS old. This is a bit senseless from the company's point of view...supporting a product for the infinite future when you make no current revenues from said support is wasting money.
Software subscriptions would be a great way to support what people want -- continued development -- with the OTHER thing they want -- low up front pricing. This sort of thing happens all the time with business licensing. For example, we pay $2700 a year for Micrsoft's MSDN subscription, which basically gives me ALL of Microsoft's software, all versions and whatever, that I might need in the course of my development work. Seems expensive, but compare it with the cost of EVERY Microsoft product for a year and it's a real bargain. Shit, just being able to test a remote installation of SQL Server 7 on Win 2000 terminal Server without having to buy either is worth it.
Except you neglect to mention that free software probably will not run on free hardware. And since the free hardware will be in greater demand, the non-free hardware will be more expensive -- a phenomenon mac users understand all too well.
Ergo, you can expect to spend quite a bit of money to run your free software. Which means fewer people will be interested in using it. Do more work and pay more money for less functionality? Not me.
Not necessarily a problem. Just something to think about. It has become more expensive to make your own stereo from components than it would be to just buy one. Ergo, only a scant few folks make their own.
My Grendel cluster will beat your Beowulf cluster.
Let me just say: as someone who has taken 16 credit hours in Old English literature, this is a hilarious sig. Though to be honest, the Beowulf cluster would beat both the Grendel cluster and the mother of all Grendel clusters...and then lose to the Dragon cluster, which I believe uses G5s.
If you are in NY, like I said there are 30 ft orthoimages for nearly the entire state. That means 1 pixel == 1 yard of space. Pretty detailed...6 pixels for my car in colour, damnit! You can also get free 1 foot contour maps in DLG format from the USGS...combine the two, and you can get a pretty keen flyover of your area. Stick that in your copy of X-Plane...
There have been a lot of good absurdist comedy series on American TV in recent years, many of them originating on Fox. Besides the obvious cartoons (Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy), there's Malcolm in the Middle and the new Ron Howard series "Arrested Development," which is, simply put, a stroke of genius. Like M.A.S.H. or Frasier, only I actually laugh at it.
I would like to know where the subtlety is in the Vogons, and in most of the other Adams villains who are evil simply because they exist. Or in any of the passages where Adams seems to be saying, "Look! Look at the funny horrors that have happened due to modern hypocritical beaurocracy!" I find that this kind of subtlety hits "like a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick."
If anything separates British from American films, it's not so much the direction of the plot as it is devotion to the plot. In most American films, you see the plot, you grab on to it, and it is the sole driving force for everything the characters do. Wheras in most British films, plot is more of an afterthought to explain why the characters are doing anything in the first place. The plot is there to eventually tie the next segment in with this one. It can be very disjointed...try following the plot through an episode of the Young Ones, you'll see what I mean.
Who's the bigger patriot? A man who volunteered to go to war, went overseas, saw first hand combat, killed the enemy and was injured three times, who decided that the war he fought in was not accomplishing anything and needed to be stopped before more people died needlessly?
Or a man who joined the reserves, asked not to be sent overseas, and spent the war skipping out on his duty?
Not supporting an arbitrary war doesn't make you a pacifist. We're telling our troops that they are fighting to protect America's freedom. If the war proves to have no net positive effect, directly or indirectly, on our freedom, and indeed devolves into wholesale slaughter with no gains, what're you supposed to do? Keep fighting and trying to win a war nobody believes in? Or back out in shame?
Incidentally, in the past 40 years, how many generals won the presidency? How many lawyers? Are you claiming we wouldn't vote for Washington or Lincoln anymore just because they weren't governors?
What? You know, every time you use a computer there's a good chance you're supporting China as well. They make a LOT of goods over there, and the cheaply made stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. China's making some really NICE gear now, as nice as American made...stuff like the iPod, which is constructed in China of Taiwanese made parts designed in California.
There is NO WAY you can live out your day in a America without using something Chinese. Check the Craftsman tools next time you're at Sears...the steel ones are probably made in the US still, but all of the power tools are Chinese. Same with Mikita. And if you want to turn the tide, you're about twenty years too late -- we had a chance in this country to actually read and care about where our products were made, and we chose to save $50 on a VCR instead.