"Dear sir/madam, We are very sorry to report that our original source tree was destroyed by accident when a disk sub-system failed in one of our machines. We have found a paper copy of the 100,000 lines of source that one of our engineers had printed out, and we would be happy to copy it for you at our cost. We cannot guarantee the quality of the copy, since the originals weren't stored in any proper fashion, and we hope no pages are missing. This is the best we can do. Please advise if you'd like to pursue this and we'll get an estimate on the copying costs. Thank you."
When all of this is actually confirmed in a court of law, we'll believe it 100%. Right now, what you're saying is that is the way the licenses are written.
No court has upheld or even seen a case regarding a license CHANGE during the course of a product's public "run" yet, that I know of.
Oh what silliness. Apple has no monopoly on PMP's at all. People just buy their stuff because they like the devices, and know about them from TV ads.
Any other wimpy little PMP manufacturer buys some airtime and gets themselves a good marketing campaign, they'd see a resulting bump in sales.
Going from "people like them and they win in the marketplace" to "monopoly" is quite a stretch. It's not like the MSFT case (which was all about pre-installed browsers, not the OS, and it's cute that no one seems to remember that), or any other anti-trust case at all.
Apple makes PMP's. People like them. Don't like them, buy someone else's. Many even have better audio quality and cleaner D-to-A chipsets than Apple's products.
Just because Aunt Tillie doesn't know how to FIND them at the store, isn't Apple's fault. Nor does it make Apple a "monopoly". Learn what the word means.
Sometimes things that LOOK like monopolies spring up when the MAJORITY of consumers want that company's product.
That doesn't make it a monopoly.
Apple would have to be actively destroying say, Creative Labs, ability to build music players. They're not.
All the DRM whiners can still buy any other music player they want.
Heck, they can even load MP3 files onto their Apple players and avoid the ITMS all together. Apple's own player will play non-DRM'ed music just as well as DRM'ed stuff. Gee. Sounds ultra-hard-core DRM-evil.
Most of the general public seems to be in that mode where they want to scream, "Let me go run and get my government mommie/daddy to do something about everything that's wrong in my life -- even though those things are by my own hand and choices. In this case, it's because I'm an uneducated clueless consumer, and I found out that I bought the wrong thing and can't take care of myself! Maybe they'll change my diaper too! Where's the EFF? They'll pay for "saving" me with funds donated for other smarter purposes, won't they?
Hint: I won't give a dime anymore to EFF now that they're in the "protect the consumer" game. The "consumer" needs to make mistakes and pay for them, in order to learn. I'm not going to pay EFF to save them from their own stupidity.
It's not like finding information on DRM is difficult these days... sheesh. Hell, the Apple LICENSE they have to click YES on uses the term right when they load iTunes. Can't be bothered to learn how it works, then too bad.
Same as the idiots who signed for bad mortgages.
Get some personal responsibility and grow up. Someone has to. Don't like Apple, don't buy their stuff. Don't call them a "monopoly" when they're just successful at business.
Not defending the argument that they don't work, but a very large number of businesses make/save more money with them monitoring their OWN STAFF for fraud/stealing, than they do from ever catching any "external" crooks.
There are more cameras in the employee-only areas of a WalMart than there are in the retail store portion of the building.
I keep hearing this cliche' with no backing from the person saying it about what's really not working that needs to be "Changed".
The market issues are a bi-partisan screw-up that started all the way back in the 70's and ends now that people won't stand for it.
What other laws were you thinking need changing?
Do you typically like MORE laws or LESS laws?
(Because you're damn sure to get a LOT more laws passed, both the good and horrible varieties, under a Democratic House, Senate, and President... and you're going to appoint a far-left Supreme Court justice to uphold them for the rest of their life in one election. If that includes limits on capital gains that are oppressive, restructuring of 401K's into a government-run program, whatever... it'll all "stick" forever. Think man. DECIDE what it is you think we're MISSING for laws in the current environment, and whether or not we really need more...)
True socialism generally doesn't work, since it removes all incentive to be an individual and succeed in any way, so I can't blame them for being "right of center" on that one!
The more socialist, the less rewards for achievement.
Good conversation and some good points, some of which I agree with.
"I'm hoping Obama can keep the nutjobs from his own party in check"... me too.
"McCain in 2000 would have been a visionary President, McCain of today has sold out to clamber to the top of a corrupted party machine drunk on power, willful ignorance and intolerance." People seem to think he changed as a person, I don't think so. I think he played the game so he could get the nomination and then force real changes.
Either way, either guy... we're headed for a recession... normal 7 year cycle... and a lot of people are still due to take big personal losses in real-estate.
"Big Government is neither good nor bad, it simply is. Some problems can be most effectively solved by Government intervention. Some problems are best solved by markets. Our political system tries to enforce a false dichotomy simply to give identity to opposing factions, which every day forces us to make tradeoffs that we shouldn't have to."
Totally agreed. But what would be the alternative? Somehow convince everyone that there's nothing to "win", parties don't matter, and only rational thought and compromise will win the day?
I think most educated people know this, but the political parties are forced to use whatever "works" on the uneducated (and therefore usually undecided) to sway EMOTIONS to garner votes. Sadly, the "swing voter" is usually the dumbest voter... thus the wave of crap on TV lately, including the 30 minute Obama-makes-his-own-gravy! Informercial last night.
$4 million bucks to sway the "undecided". If they haven't picked by now, they have no clue anyway. Therefore, I say... "the idiot vote wins the Presidency now".
(For those that think I'm picking on Obama, look at the first G.W. Bush campaign. The idiots won it for him too, and even as a Republican I could not hold my nose and vote for him after what he did to McCain in 2000 in the South.)
p.s. I've NEVER seen corporate management allow coders to write things that won't see the light of day. I really have no idea where that's coming from. At least not around our shop... or any of the other's I've worked at.
Engineers might be pulled from a cancelled project, but that's usually a BUSINESS decision about the product's traction during initial demos, but even in those cases... they usually end up re-using much of the original code after they start "morphing" the product to something else the customers might want.
In the case of mature already-on-the-market products, all engineering managers seem to ever do is LOWER the number of resources working on them in "continuation" mode, meaning that every single bugfix or line of code written to add/change a feature is almost always used.
Again, at least around my shop... that's the way it works. No fancy "pair programming", no crazy new ideas on how to change the whole philosophy of how code is written or "fad" cultural changes happen... just engineers assigned tasks that are headed toward a final product, working off as good of a specification as the team could write, while still planning to release on-time.
That's how it goes around here... with all the usual management, motivation, product, and other problems introduced every day... otherwise known as "doing business".
Those companies don't have a MAJORITY of their coders working on open-source projects, other than Sun perhaps, and they're just completely mismanaged. Seen their stock or their earnings lately? Hell, seen their products lately? Ugh. Crap. (And I hate to say it since they're just down the road from my workplace. Buying StorageTek? WTF? CEO writes "blogs" instead of running the company? Give me a break... we've used their gear in our products for a couple of decades, but we're getting away from it now. They're tanking.)
Show me one of those companies where their real money investment in open-source out-paces their investment in the rest of the company's code or products.
They're just good capitalists. Put a small effort into the open-source community by hiring a few developers and get all the benefits of the code "risk-free".
You'll also notice that their REAL money-makers aren't the things they contribute to. Put a guy on the kernel team, you're just hedging your bets to make sure you have a say in where the kernel is going. Leaving the idiots at Sun out of this picture, IBM & Oracle's balance sheets are virtually unaffected by anything they do open-source... other than perhaps Oracle's play to buy MySQL and keep it as mediocre and crappy as possible.
Going on to your comment about closed failing as much as open... yes, I agree with you. The difference is, closed stuff failing is often some guy in his basement who's JUST as unknown as the failing idiots writing bad open-source stuff, but at least there's an upside potential for one of them. If the guy ISN'T an idiot and writes something GREAT, he gets paid in one system... and in the other he MIGHT get paid and maybe the cover of Linux Journal. Which one is more sane?
And for the election... not an Obama voter here. Closed-source = Pure capitalism!
Nah... what bugs me about open-source is its fans that promise stuff it simply can't deliver. It's been how many years that a cohesive "works so well we all use it" desktop still doesn't exist, so the Linux crowd can both seemingly forever say, "We'll take over the desktop market NEXT year!" and also say, "Because we have so much CHOICE, we understand the desktop is confusing to many people."
Gee, ya think?
Get some standards... get a goal... get a JOB... compete in the real world where people choose to spend real capital on goods. Even Linus has had real jobs. And RMS is living in a world of tenure and forever paychecks that most of us will realistically NEVER see.
(Oh I'm sure that'll get me modded down to whatever lovely negative number Slashdot now allows, and get all sorts of open-source fans who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag to hammer me in replies now... oh well! Don't care.)
In the normal view of politics, Democrats are leftist, Republicans are right. Democrats *generally* agree with socialism as a solution, Republicans don't. Centrists might go either way.
I'm a SLIGHTLY right of center, centrist... who likes to vote either to dead-lock the system (so they HAVE to work together and insane ideologues aren't in FULL control), or anti-incumbent... as in "Well, I don't know who this moron is, so he must not be representing me very well, or something great would have come out of his being in office."
When you say "things staying the same", what particular "things" are you talking about? Let's have a real conversation, not a platitude phrased in the form of a cliche'.
Reality is: Change happens no matter who is President.
The things a PRESIDENT has control over are vetos over BAD legislature, and Supreme Court appointments.
They have influence but NOT CONTROL over all this stuff BOTH idiots are promising the public.
The public apparently didn't pay attention in "Social Studies" or "Civics" class. Or they just like the rah-rah and can't be bothered to stop and think very often. Probably both.
As far as the 90's go... 90-93' was G. W. Bush, and 93 through the turn of the Century was W. J. Clinton, so I'm not sure what your point is. Want to make a real assertion about what you think happened with real details?
If you want to go back that far, we could go ALL the way back to Carter and the laws and systems that essentially FORCED banks to lend to 30% more people than they ever had before under the banner of Fannie Mae "guarantees" which were EXTENDED under Clinton... everyone's enjoying pointing at the Republicans saying their lack of oversight is "causing" the current credit/finance problems, but no one wants to go back and point out that 30% of the people who HAVE loans, simply should NOT. They never could afford them, and still can't.
That particular fiscal disaster is NOT over yet. People who HAVE to move to follow a job or whatever... is a LARGE percentage, and they're going to be in serious pain for years to come, trying to get banks to accept their short-sales, or paying off huge losses in the property they never should have purchased in the first place.
Ahh well, I'm just a spectator, and trading the market whether it goes up or goes down. The best rallies always happen during a bear market... down down down we go... normal 7 year cycle... recession's just starting. Get used to it. Neither Obama NOR McCain can stop it.
I just feel that under Obama, we'll see some really bad legislation passed along party lines, and he will be forced by his party to swallow hard and sign it, even if he is a good person and disagrees with it. At least SOME of it.
Hmm... looking at the reply that's already here, and the high emotional levels (as compared to cogent/rational behavior) -- I'm sure someone won't like this, but I first heard about it on Limbaugh.
Now before anyone flies off the handle, the guy at least generally has to vet his stories, since he's national.
I didn't have any time to follow up and hunt for it on C-SPAN or similar that day... nor did he mention WHICH committee was meeting.
But... seriously... that TYPE of thinking is not that far-fetched when it comes to Democrats. Social Security's a mess, the markets are a mess, let's "protect" everyone from themselves and just literally CONFISCATE their investments, and manage the investments for them. That's very typical ideology from Democrats.
It'll be hedged in the media as "We're doing this for your own good."
Sorry, wish I had better links or something else to point to, but I do make it a point NOT to read Limbaugh's website or visit it. I try to stay a LITTLE balanced... and frequenting his site would mean I'd have to frequent something equally whacked on the left to feel like I read both sides... and I just don't have the time.
(Too busy hunting for decent buys in this ultra-hammered market. There's deals. Made $10/share on AAPL after the idiot analysts said they'd miss on earnings for 3rd Quarter, the stock got crushed along with the market and then popped up today in this volatile mess -- which isn't stopping any time soon. Pops and Drops, as they say on CNBC's Fast Money... might as well trade them. Uh-oh, I revealed that I'm an unabashed Capitalist... I think I hear the neighborhood Obama fans on the front porch to come tell me my OPTIMISM about SOME things in this market is bad, and only some doofus politician from Chicago can save me! Save me Big O! Be my daddy! Yeah, right.)
That'll be the first question I'll have... if I ever use it. I'd rather hang out at Panera Bread, Caribou Coffee, or a whole lot of other places than Starbucks.
Oh yeah, I have WiFi at home, and coffee too. Wow. What a place! I'll be here...
The only place it looks useful to me, if I were still traveling a lot, is at the airports.
Not to mention the food is a hell of a lot better at both, and so is the amount of space, the furniture, hell... everything.
The only thing Starbucks has going for it now is that it overbuilt stores, and is bloody everywhere. The coffee and "ambiance" aren't going to hold up in this market... and many will close.
Hell, if they're in your area, most Caribou Coffee shops are way nicer to hang out in than Starbucks.
They were the trendsetter, the also-rans now have studied them and are coming to kick their ass.
Weasel words. The majority of big open source projects"... let's get real here...
The kernel devs, the Apache Foundation guys, some Ubuntu devs, the employees at RedHat and yeah.. a few others... is about it for "big" open source projects.
Thousands and thousands of mediocre programmers slog away creating thousands and thousands of "open source" software packages that go nowhere. Fast.
Companies on the other hand, create things customers want, or they go out of business.
There's no penalty for crappy code other than being "unknown" in open source development. In fact, I've met a few open source developers that think this means that they just haven't been "discovered" yet. Or worse, the super-egos who constantly tout how wonderful their utterly mediocre their software is.
This is the underlying problem with holding out hope for getting paid in open source. The chances are about as good as a slot machine in Reno of paying off big. You can do better getting a corporate coding job and learning how to invest and save properly, than you're likely to ever make in open source.
So far, the Democrats (who look to have a handy majority) are already meeting in committee and having SERIOUS discussions about taking 401K money and putting it back into Social Security.
With a majority in the House and Senate, and a Democratic President appointing the next two Supreme Court Justices, I'd say we're in a for a long strange time for many years to come, if Obama wins.
If McCain wins, he's forced to possibly replace the Justice who's 88 years old and waiting for a Democratic President before he retires, and he's also forced to appoint a fairly middle of the road Justice or they won't make it through the Democratic Senate. Seems a lot more sane to vote the dead-lock to me, than to vote for far left-wing majorities and no veto power.
People want to vote Obama because they LIKE him, that's fine... but they are ignoring the realities of the checks and balances built into the system which will be negated, and the results will be some really insane laws and changes. We'll see if they like their "real Change that's not a slogan".
When running a piece of coax outside and sticking up an antenna on a push-up pole on the end of it is "that hassle", we really have become lazy sloths.
That used to be the only way to even get TV.
Just do it. You'll appreciate having the other channels, and it's maybe 30 minutes worth of work.
I assume you're using "rabbit ears" or similar right now.
I already had a Dish Network DVR with dual-tuners, but since it also had an ATSC input, I threw up an antenna for it. Great for when a HUGE thunderstorm blocks the dish from the satellite (happens maybe three times a year at my house), and you still want to watch some local sporting event, or whatever... and of course, the DVR can record from those channels also...
Well worth the effort to put up the OTA antenna. And I already HAD satellite. You can put yours up in just a few minutes more than it will take you to read this posting.:-)
Carriers also need to filter out ANI that is not for numbers on their networks at the inbound edge.
Having worked with carriers for over 15 years, ANI is known to be generally worthless for accuracy. If you get a valid ANI from the network, great. If it's mangled, wrong, or otherwise stupid... it happens.
The only way to clean it up is that all good (large) carriers must agree to dump any incoming ANI information that's not a number on their network.
Slashdot Mirror
"Dear sir/madam, We are very sorry to report that our original source tree was destroyed by accident when a disk sub-system failed in one of our machines. We have found a paper copy of the 100,000 lines of source that one of our engineers had printed out, and we would be happy to copy it for you at our cost. We cannot guarantee the quality of the copy, since the originals weren't stored in any proper fashion, and we hope no pages are missing. This is the best we can do. Please advise if you'd like to pursue this and we'll get an estimate on the copying costs. Thank you."
LOL!
When all of this is actually confirmed in a court of law, we'll believe it 100%. Right now, what you're saying is that is the way the licenses are written.
No court has upheld or even seen a case regarding a license CHANGE during the course of a product's public "run" yet, that I know of.
If they have, send links.
Oh what silliness. Apple has no monopoly on PMP's at all. People just buy their stuff because they like the devices, and know about them from TV ads.
Any other wimpy little PMP manufacturer buys some airtime and gets themselves a good marketing campaign, they'd see a resulting bump in sales.
Going from "people like them and they win in the marketplace" to "monopoly" is quite a stretch. It's not like the MSFT case (which was all about pre-installed browsers, not the OS, and it's cute that no one seems to remember that), or any other anti-trust case at all.
Apple makes PMP's. People like them. Don't like them, buy someone else's. Many even have better audio quality and cleaner D-to-A chipsets than Apple's products.
Just because Aunt Tillie doesn't know how to FIND them at the store, isn't Apple's fault. Nor does it make Apple a "monopoly". Learn what the word means.
Sometimes things that LOOK like monopolies spring up when the MAJORITY of consumers want that company's product.
That doesn't make it a monopoly.
Apple would have to be actively destroying say, Creative Labs, ability to build music players. They're not.
All the DRM whiners can still buy any other music player they want.
Heck, they can even load MP3 files onto their Apple players and avoid the ITMS all together. Apple's own player will play non-DRM'ed music just as well as DRM'ed stuff. Gee. Sounds ultra-hard-core DRM-evil.
Most of the general public seems to be in that mode where they want to scream, "Let me go run and get my government mommie/daddy to do something about everything that's wrong in my life -- even though those things are by my own hand and choices. In this case, it's because I'm an uneducated clueless consumer, and I found out that I bought the wrong thing and can't take care of myself! Maybe they'll change my diaper too! Where's the EFF? They'll pay for "saving" me with funds donated for other smarter purposes, won't they?
Hint: I won't give a dime anymore to EFF now that they're in the "protect the consumer" game. The "consumer" needs to make mistakes and pay for them, in order to learn. I'm not going to pay EFF to save them from their own stupidity.
It's not like finding information on DRM is difficult these days... sheesh. Hell, the Apple LICENSE they have to click YES on uses the term right when they load iTunes. Can't be bothered to learn how it works, then too bad.
Same as the idiots who signed for bad mortgages.
Get some personal responsibility and grow up. Someone has to. Don't like Apple, don't buy their stuff. Don't call them a "monopoly" when they're just successful at business.
Funny that they must have known your true inner feelings, since you used the word "prey" instead of "pray".
That or they just like stinging the spelling-challenged humans more than the rest of us.
Not defending the argument that they don't work, but a very large number of businesses make/save more money with them monitoring their OWN STAFF for fraud/stealing, than they do from ever catching any "external" crooks.
There are more cameras in the employee-only areas of a WalMart than there are in the retail store portion of the building.
I keep hearing this cliche' with no backing from the person saying it about what's really not working that needs to be "Changed".
The market issues are a bi-partisan screw-up that started all the way back in the 70's and ends now that people won't stand for it.
What other laws were you thinking need changing?
Do you typically like MORE laws or LESS laws?
(Because you're damn sure to get a LOT more laws passed, both the good and horrible varieties, under a Democratic House, Senate, and President... and you're going to appoint a far-left Supreme Court justice to uphold them for the rest of their life in one election. If that includes limits on capital gains that are oppressive, restructuring of 401K's into a government-run program, whatever... it'll all "stick" forever. Think man. DECIDE what it is you think we're MISSING for laws in the current environment, and whether or not we really need more...)
LOL...
Okay, point taken.
True socialism generally doesn't work, since it removes all incentive to be an individual and succeed in any way, so I can't blame them for being "right of center" on that one!
The more socialist, the less rewards for achievement.
Good conversation and some good points, some of which I agree with.
"I'm hoping Obama can keep the nutjobs from his own party in check"... me too.
"McCain in 2000 would have been a visionary President, McCain of today has sold out to clamber to the top of a corrupted party machine drunk on power, willful ignorance and intolerance." People seem to think he changed as a person, I don't think so. I think he played the game so he could get the nomination and then force real changes.
Either way, either guy... we're headed for a recession... normal 7 year cycle... and a lot of people are still due to take big personal losses in real-estate.
"Big Government is neither good nor bad, it simply is. Some problems can be most effectively solved by Government intervention. Some problems are best solved by markets. Our political system tries to enforce a false dichotomy simply to give identity to opposing factions, which every day forces us to make tradeoffs that we shouldn't have to."
Totally agreed. But what would be the alternative? Somehow convince everyone that there's nothing to "win", parties don't matter, and only rational thought and compromise will win the day?
I think most educated people know this, but the political parties are forced to use whatever "works" on the uneducated (and therefore usually undecided) to sway EMOTIONS to garner votes. Sadly, the "swing voter" is usually the dumbest voter... thus the wave of crap on TV lately, including the 30 minute Obama-makes-his-own-gravy! Informercial last night.
$4 million bucks to sway the "undecided". If they haven't picked by now, they have no clue anyway. Therefore, I say... "the idiot vote wins the Presidency now".
(For those that think I'm picking on Obama, look at the first G.W. Bush campaign. The idiots won it for him too, and even as a Republican I could not hold my nose and vote for him after what he did to McCain in 2000 in the South.)
p.s. I've NEVER seen corporate management allow coders to write things that won't see the light of day. I really have no idea where that's coming from. At least not around our shop... or any of the other's I've worked at.
Engineers might be pulled from a cancelled project, but that's usually a BUSINESS decision about the product's traction during initial demos, but even in those cases... they usually end up re-using much of the original code after they start "morphing" the product to something else the customers might want.
In the case of mature already-on-the-market products, all engineering managers seem to ever do is LOWER the number of resources working on them in "continuation" mode, meaning that every single bugfix or line of code written to add/change a feature is almost always used.
Again, at least around my shop... that's the way it works. No fancy "pair programming", no crazy new ideas on how to change the whole philosophy of how code is written or "fad" cultural changes happen... just engineers assigned tasks that are headed toward a final product, working off as good of a specification as the team could write, while still planning to release on-time.
That's how it goes around here... with all the usual management, motivation, product, and other problems introduced every day... otherwise known as "doing business".
Those companies don't have a MAJORITY of their coders working on open-source projects, other than Sun perhaps, and they're just completely mismanaged. Seen their stock or their earnings lately? Hell, seen their products lately? Ugh. Crap. (And I hate to say it since they're just down the road from my workplace. Buying StorageTek? WTF? CEO writes "blogs" instead of running the company? Give me a break... we've used their gear in our products for a couple of decades, but we're getting away from it now. They're tanking.)
Show me one of those companies where their real money investment in open-source out-paces their investment in the rest of the company's code or products.
They're just good capitalists. Put a small effort into the open-source community by hiring a few developers and get all the benefits of the code "risk-free".
You'll also notice that their REAL money-makers aren't the things they contribute to. Put a guy on the kernel team, you're just hedging your bets to make sure you have a say in where the kernel is going. Leaving the idiots at Sun out of this picture, IBM & Oracle's balance sheets are virtually unaffected by anything they do open-source... other than perhaps Oracle's play to buy MySQL and keep it as mediocre and crappy as possible.
Going on to your comment about closed failing as much as open... yes, I agree with you. The difference is, closed stuff failing is often some guy in his basement who's JUST as unknown as the failing idiots writing bad open-source stuff, but at least there's an upside potential for one of them. If the guy ISN'T an idiot and writes something GREAT, he gets paid in one system... and in the other he MIGHT get paid and maybe the cover of Linux Journal. Which one is more sane?
And for the election... not an Obama voter here. Closed-source = Pure capitalism!
Nah... what bugs me about open-source is its fans that promise stuff it simply can't deliver. It's been how many years that a cohesive "works so well we all use it" desktop still doesn't exist, so the Linux crowd can both seemingly forever say, "We'll take over the desktop market NEXT year!" and also say, "Because we have so much CHOICE, we understand the desktop is confusing to many people."
Gee, ya think?
Get some standards... get a goal... get a JOB... compete in the real world where people choose to spend real capital on goods. Even Linus has had real jobs. And RMS is living in a world of tenure and forever paychecks that most of us will realistically NEVER see.
(Oh I'm sure that'll get me modded down to whatever lovely negative number Slashdot now allows, and get all sorts of open-source fans who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag to hammer me in replies now... oh well! Don't care.)
In the normal view of politics, Democrats are leftist, Republicans are right. Democrats *generally* agree with socialism as a solution, Republicans don't. Centrists might go either way.
I'm a SLIGHTLY right of center, centrist... who likes to vote either to dead-lock the system (so they HAVE to work together and insane ideologues aren't in FULL control), or anti-incumbent... as in "Well, I don't know who this moron is, so he must not be representing me very well, or something great would have come out of his being in office."
When you say "things staying the same", what particular "things" are you talking about? Let's have a real conversation, not a platitude phrased in the form of a cliche'.
Reality is: Change happens no matter who is President.
The things a PRESIDENT has control over are vetos over BAD legislature, and Supreme Court appointments.
They have influence but NOT CONTROL over all this stuff BOTH idiots are promising the public.
The public apparently didn't pay attention in "Social Studies" or "Civics" class. Or they just like the rah-rah and can't be bothered to stop and think very often. Probably both.
As far as the 90's go... 90-93' was G. W. Bush, and 93 through the turn of the Century was W. J. Clinton, so I'm not sure what your point is. Want to make a real assertion about what you think happened with real details?
If you want to go back that far, we could go ALL the way back to Carter and the laws and systems that essentially FORCED banks to lend to 30% more people than they ever had before under the banner of Fannie Mae "guarantees" which were EXTENDED under Clinton... everyone's enjoying pointing at the Republicans saying their lack of oversight is "causing" the current credit/finance problems, but no one wants to go back and point out that 30% of the people who HAVE loans, simply should NOT. They never could afford them, and still can't.
That particular fiscal disaster is NOT over yet. People who HAVE to move to follow a job or whatever... is a LARGE percentage, and they're going to be in serious pain for years to come, trying to get banks to accept their short-sales, or paying off huge losses in the property they never should have purchased in the first place.
Ahh well, I'm just a spectator, and trading the market whether it goes up or goes down. The best rallies always happen during a bear market... down down down we go... normal 7 year cycle... recession's just starting. Get used to it. Neither Obama NOR McCain can stop it.
I just feel that under Obama, we'll see some really bad legislation passed along party lines, and he will be forced by his party to swallow hard and sign it, even if he is a good person and disagrees with it. At least SOME of it.
Hmm... looking at the reply that's already here, and the high emotional levels (as compared to cogent/rational behavior) -- I'm sure someone won't like this, but I first heard about it on Limbaugh.
Now before anyone flies off the handle, the guy at least generally has to vet his stories, since he's national.
I didn't have any time to follow up and hunt for it on C-SPAN or similar that day... nor did he mention WHICH committee was meeting.
But... seriously... that TYPE of thinking is not that far-fetched when it comes to Democrats. Social Security's a mess, the markets are a mess, let's "protect" everyone from themselves and just literally CONFISCATE their investments, and manage the investments for them. That's very typical ideology from Democrats.
It'll be hedged in the media as "We're doing this for your own good."
Sorry, wish I had better links or something else to point to, but I do make it a point NOT to read Limbaugh's website or visit it. I try to stay a LITTLE balanced... and frequenting his site would mean I'd have to frequent something equally whacked on the left to feel like I read both sides... and I just don't have the time.
(Too busy hunting for decent buys in this ultra-hammered market. There's deals. Made $10/share on AAPL after the idiot analysts said they'd miss on earnings for 3rd Quarter, the stock got crushed along with the market and then popped up today in this volatile mess -- which isn't stopping any time soon. Pops and Drops, as they say on CNBC's Fast Money... might as well trade them. Uh-oh, I revealed that I'm an unabashed Capitalist... I think I hear the neighborhood Obama fans on the front porch to come tell me my OPTIMISM about SOME things in this market is bad, and only some doofus politician from Chicago can save me! Save me Big O! Be my daddy! Yeah, right.)
That'll be the first question I'll have... if I ever use it. I'd rather hang out at Panera Bread, Caribou Coffee, or a whole lot of other places than Starbucks.
Oh yeah, I have WiFi at home, and coffee too. Wow. What a place! I'll be here...
The only place it looks useful to me, if I were still traveling a lot, is at the airports.
Not to mention the food is a hell of a lot better at both, and so is the amount of space, the furniture, hell... everything.
The only thing Starbucks has going for it now is that it overbuilt stores, and is bloody everywhere. The coffee and "ambiance" aren't going to hold up in this market... and many will close.
Hell, if they're in your area, most Caribou Coffee shops are way nicer to hang out in than Starbucks.
They were the trendsetter, the also-rans now have studied them and are coming to kick their ass.
Sometimes it's about what you know about whom.
Weasel words. The majority of big open source projects"... let's get real here...
The kernel devs, the Apache Foundation guys, some Ubuntu devs, the employees at RedHat and yeah.. a few others... is about it for "big" open source projects.
Thousands and thousands of mediocre programmers slog away creating thousands and thousands of "open source" software packages that go nowhere. Fast.
Companies on the other hand, create things customers want, or they go out of business.
There's no penalty for crappy code other than being "unknown" in open source development. In fact, I've met a few open source developers that think this means that they just haven't been "discovered" yet. Or worse, the super-egos who constantly tout how wonderful their utterly mediocre their software is.
This is the underlying problem with holding out hope for getting paid in open source. The chances are about as good as a slot machine in Reno of paying off big. You can do better getting a corporate coding job and learning how to invest and save properly, than you're likely to ever make in open source.
Welcome to the U.S. Chairforce, er Airforce.
They announced last week that they expect 50% of their aircraft purchases going forward will be remotely-piloted vehicles.
So far, the Democrats (who look to have a handy majority) are already meeting in committee and having SERIOUS discussions about taking 401K money and putting it back into Social Security.
With a majority in the House and Senate, and a Democratic President appointing the next two Supreme Court Justices, I'd say we're in a for a long strange time for many years to come, if Obama wins.
If McCain wins, he's forced to possibly replace the Justice who's 88 years old and waiting for a Democratic President before he retires, and he's also forced to appoint a fairly middle of the road Justice or they won't make it through the Democratic Senate. Seems a lot more sane to vote the dead-lock to me, than to vote for far left-wing majorities and no veto power.
People want to vote Obama because they LIKE him, that's fine... but they are ignoring the realities of the checks and balances built into the system which will be negated, and the results will be some really insane laws and changes. We'll see if they like their "real Change that's not a slogan".
When running a piece of coax outside and sticking up an antenna on a push-up pole on the end of it is "that hassle", we really have become lazy sloths.
That used to be the only way to even get TV.
Just do it. You'll appreciate having the other channels, and it's maybe 30 minutes worth of work.
I assume you're using "rabbit ears" or similar right now.
I already had a Dish Network DVR with dual-tuners, but since it also had an ATSC input, I threw up an antenna for it. Great for when a HUGE thunderstorm blocks the dish from the satellite (happens maybe three times a year at my house), and you still want to watch some local sporting event, or whatever... and of course, the DVR can record from those channels also...
Well worth the effort to put up the OTA antenna. And I already HAD satellite. You can put yours up in just a few minutes more than it will take you to read this posting. :-)
Energy?
I think it's awesome. It's so fscking ugly it helps sell more Macs. :-)
Jobs? Really?
You may want to consider that you might be taking postings on a website WAY too seriously...
Bloatware.
Carriers started filtering IP spoofing years ago.
Carriers also need to filter out ANI that is not for numbers on their networks at the inbound edge.
Having worked with carriers for over 15 years, ANI is known to be generally worthless for accuracy. If you get a valid ANI from the network, great. If it's mangled, wrong, or otherwise stupid... it happens.
The only way to clean it up is that all good (large) carriers must agree to dump any incoming ANI information that's not a number on their network.
Maybe. Who said Windows is all there is? Not me certainly.