If you work for Microsoft then perhaps you can answer me this: Why do Visual Studio licenses have to be so darned expensive? Yes, I know about the express editions, but they are lacking in critical features that are sorely needed for serious development work. Why can't Microsoft offer the core IDE free of charge or for nominal charge (i.e. less than $100), call it supporting the platform if you want, while charging for high end add-ons like Team System instead of making those high end features a whole separate version of the IDE? There are too many different versions of what is essentially 80%+ the same product in Visual Studio. Firefox and other open source projects have shown the way with the core + add-on approach and after the Vista debacle (which had what, 8 different versions?) the message should be clear. This would also allow them to roll out important updates to the core product more quickly and easily while allowing even greater language and compiler choices in the core IDE via the add-on system. Visual Studio is nice, but it costs too damn much and it could be so much better. Does Microsoft even realize that the main thing keeping most of their technical users, and especially developers, on Windows instead of fleeing for Mac or Linux is.NET and Visual Studio? Why not press that advantage even more by making the full-featured core IDE cheaper or even free? The marketing people at Microsoft are screwing it all up (as usual) and preventing the really good ideas and smart developers from realizing the full potential and benefit of their ideas and work.
Since a computer's hard disk spins hundreds of thousands of times per hour, and can contain many copies of the mantra, anyone who wants to can turn their computer into a prayer wheel.
By making it legal, you can bring them onshore, where they can be taxed and regulated, just like state lotteries and privately-owned casinos.
Actually, you wouldn't need to bring them onshore to do that. Gambling can be taxed under WTO rules as long as onshore and offshore gambling are taxed equally. In fact, the US is currently under WTO sanctions because our gambling laws are at odds with our treaty obligations with regard to gambling.
Speaking of privately-owned casinos, at least Sen. Reid of Nevada has a "legitimate" reason to be a roadblock: He just doesn't want to see Vegas have any competition.
Pure cynicism if ever there was such a thing; its hard to be more blatantly biased than that.
The dumb part about Reid's objection is that the legalization of online poker would bring a lot of new players into the game. Some of 'em might even end up enjoying it so much they end up going to Vegas to play the game in meatspace.
It is not the role of government to ban activities which people might enjoy too much, even to their own detriment. The lives of individuals belong to those individuals and it is not the damn business of the State to tell two people that they cannot gamble, have sex in a peculiar way, smoke, drink etc. It was supposed to be a free country people and that means freedom to make the "wrong" choices (or choices that some might judge to be wrong) as long as such choices do not infringe upon the abilities of others to make their own free choices (i.e. no violence or coercion). I really dislike people who try to run or control the lives of other free thinking and independent adults because they represent the tyranny that our founding fathers and generations of our soldiers shed blood to escape from.
In fact there are websites in Britain where you can do just that, put out custom bets (i.e. Bin Laden, captured or killed by MM/DD/YYYY) and get other users to take you up on them. You can bet on just about anything were the outcome can be determined as long as you can find someone willing to take the opposite side.
And how many people failed to attend college because they, or their parents, gambled away the college fund?
That is an argument which is sometimes made by the anti-gambling people, but really how many specific cases have their been where parents gambled away junior's college money? It seems to be a popular cautionary story that happens rarely in practice (i.e. a variation of the "think of the children" fallacy). This type of logical fallacy has a long and colorful history in our legislature, and it is easier to appeal to emotion rather than logic (i.e. "if you are against me then you are against the children, how can you be against the children?"), but that doesn't make the tactic right. The more that we use emotional arguments in our national policy the greater the damage that we do to our constitution and the values that our nation was founded upon.
I'm not saying gambling should be illegal, I just think it's silly to argue for gambling the perspective of the winners
Fair enough, but did you know that the US is presently in violation of the WTO treaties on trade with our present gambling laws? The treaties say that you can either ban all gambling or allow it, but that if you allow it then you must allow foreign competition (i.e. offshore internet gambling). In fact, a small caribbean nation (Antigua) actually won a WTO action against the United States on this very point and the United States is currently racking up fines and damages payable to Antigua for violating the treaty. What makes the whole thing doubly interesting is that Antigua has requested an unusual remedy, namely the privilege of ignoring US copyrights on movies, music, software, and other creative products produced in the United States.
The amazing part is that IBM is wasting this kind of money applying for a patent that has no chance of standing up in court
That is not the point. It would cost a tremendous amount of time and money to go to court, even if you would eventually win, which creates additional barriers of entry against competitors of IBM and adds to their portfolio of defensive patents. Remember that almost all patents these days are taken out for defensive purposes to fend off attacks by patent trolls and their enterprising attorneys, not to actually protect a new idea or innovation. The patent system is broken and backwards, but IBM is just playing the game. If you don't like the rules (and they are indeed stupid when it comes to software patents) then blame the government and the lawyers.
the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer.
Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I laughed out loud when I read that part of his commentary. Many of the "great works" of art and literature, or at least those that many would consider "great" and of "high culture", were produced in the age before copyright. If the sort of crap that is currently produced by Sony and others in the entertainment industry passes as "high quality culture" then they can keep it. In fact, they couldn't pay me to watch it. The previous system of wealthy patronage seems to have contributed far more high quality works to the public domain than Sony and their cronies. My response to them, to paraphrase Bill Epton, is "burn, Sony, burn".
But, mixed markets do at least approach the ideals of the vast majority of people
and yet they fail miserably every time that they have been tried. For example consider Britain during the 1970s or Latin America during the 1980s or India up until the free market reorganizations in the late 1990s. The mixed economy is one of those ideas that sounds great in principle, but fails miserably in practice and one of the great mistakes in economic policy is to judge a policy by its intentions rather than its actual results. The mixed economy idea (i.e. with government control or regulation of key industries) is full of good intentions in many cases, but we all know of a certain road that is paved with good intentions. The free market, for all of its short comings, works and it works in the worst possible conditions. Free markets allow people who don't speak the same languages, who may even hate each other, to cooperate economically and produce the greatest possible abundance of the goods and services that people most want to purchase at the most efficient prices. The mixed economy, for any non-trivial sized group of people, necessarily involves forcing some people to engage in transactions that they otherwise would NOT be willing to do in the name of "fairness" or "equality", but that is essentially against freedom. For a more in-depth discussion of some of these concepts might I suggest the following video?
I have believed the US Ethanol program is a lot wishful thinking fueled by quite questionable agendas. As the article says.
That is right. The US should be focused on improving the Fischer Tropsch process to produce synthetic liquid fuels, including pure and high quality gasoline, from our tremendous natural coal reserves. Unfortunately, as other posters have pointed out, the corn growing states have powerful Senators and lobbyists and they tend to vote early, especially in the case of the Iowa caucuses, in the presidential caucuses which means that anyone wishing to run for President of the United States must appease the corn farmers or their presidential bid will be over before it even begins.
How can that be? Ethanol costs more to produce than gasoline and it gets LESS miles per gallon. From the standpoint of the consumer that is a losing proposition. Why should we pay the same or more for a gallon of fuel that will not move our vehicle the same distance as a gallon of gasoline? Even if the government subsidizes ethanol so that it is cheaper than gasoline at the pump, we would still have to stop for fuel more often and it would be economically inefficient since the government would have to borrow more or raise taxes to continue subsidizing an economically inferior option. Gasoline became the fuel of choice for good economic reasons, not because of government subsidies.
If ethanol is so good for the environment then why doesn't the corn lobby advocate the end of tarrifs on imported sugar cane ethanol? It is increadibly self-serving for the corn farmers to play the environmental card while at the same time supporting high tarrifs on imported sugar cane ethanol (note: I agree with the article, ethanol is a scam foisted upon the american consumer by the EPA and the corn lobby) which is superior and less environmentally damaging than their corn ethanol except that sugar caine doesn't grow in Iowa and Nebraska. Of all the lobbyists in Washington DC the corn farmers and ethanol producers are definitely among the worst IMHO. I hope the EPA puts this suggestion where it belongs, in the rubbish bin.
They were also accessible to the everyman, unlike the Tesla roadster.
I wouldn't go that far. I seem to recall that in Who Killed The Electric Car they mentioned that the EV1 was leased, but NOT sold, for $500-$700 dollars per month which is substantially higher than what "everyman" can afford to pay. If you can afford to pay that much for a lease then you can afford to lease a luxury car such as the BMW, Mercedes-Benz, or Lexus. The "everyman" lease rate is more in the $200-$400 dollar range and generally in the lower part of the range or around $300 per month. Also, look at the owners they interviewed in the movie: Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, Ed Begley, Jr. (i.e. big money Hollywood actors); hardly the "everyman" you say the car was accessible to.
15% ethanol is too much for many current vehicles
on
The Great Ethanol Scam
·
· Score: 1
I have a relatively new vehicle and it specifically states in the fuel requirements section of the owner manual that 10% (or 15% MTBE although that is largely banned now) is the maximum amount of ethanol which may be used in the fuel. It also states that using non-compliant fuels (i.e. leaded gasoline, too much alcohol, store bought additives, etc) may result in engine damage which will NOT be covered by the vehicle warranty. I suspect that this is the case for many vehicles currently being driven on American roads today. The government would not be able to mandate 15% ethanol fuels without pissing off millions of Americans who will be faced with the prospects of reduced engine and service life expectations on their current vehicles OR possibly expensive engine upgrades / modifications which almost certainly will not be covered under warranty. If they do increase the gasohol requirements then they will have to implement a long phase in period to make it politically palatable and how much difference will 5% extra ethanol make anyway? Probably not enough to justify the expense (or even the environmental benefits) of replacement (new vehicles means more new pollution to produce them) or major upgrades / overhauls of millions of existing vehicles.
Never happen. China may publicly chide their vassal, as a parent would a child, but as long as the North Koreans continue to secretly take their marching orders from Beijing the Chinese will not give up their useful lackey. Think of it like an attention button which the Chinese can press at any time in order to draw the attention towards North Korea and away from whatever the Chinese wish to do while our collective attention is averted.
The dedicated test labs which buy/acquire these things for the sole purpose of testing them to the point of failure?
Not to mention that (a) plenty of review outlets have started honest and later devolved into "we whore ourselves for our advertisers"
That is always a possibility. The real question is how much is your time worth vs the amount of the purchase? That will vary for each individual, but rarely is it possible to get perfect information for a real world purchase decision. Generally we find out as much as we can with the amount of effort we are willing to put into researching the purchase and then we make our decision. Depending upon the value of the item and the proclivities of the buyer this could be seconds, days, weeks, months, or even years (although again there are always diminishing returns for time spent and only so much that can reasonably be found out).
just because a camera feels good in your hand doesn't mean it'll feel good in mine - in fact, the only way to see if it'll feel good in mine is to actually put it in mine.
A camera may be one of those exceptions. I don't know because I have never bought high-end cameras or photography gear. I can tell you that I generally don't buy clothes or shoes online, but even then I have made exceptions for brands and sizes that I have worn before and know will fit.
Judging by many laws / regulations etc you'd think they were written BY corporations and handed to the government to act on.
In fact, this is not far from the truth here in the United States. Does anyone actually believe that Congressmen, Senators, and their staffs actually sit down and write out 3,000+ page bills to submit to committee? Many, if not most, of the bills that come before Congress are actually written by professional lobbyists employed by firms located in and around the Washington DC area on behalf of their corporate clients. Even if the bill is written by the Congress, the budget for example, the lobby firms still submit amendments for their Congresmen and Senators to slip into the package.
Not to mention the value in being able to see the quality and try out the product before you buy it.
With all of the consumer review and testing websites, such as CNet and TomsHardware (for PCs), available these days is that even necessary anymore? The types of equipment and testing that these companies do is well beyond the sort of rigor and precision sought by most consumers (who aren't going to spend days tweaking configurations to find out that one video card has only 2 fps more than another one costing $100 less). There is only so much personal time to be put into researching a purchase and unless it is a really big ticket item, like a house or a car, most people don't spend weeks and months figuring out what they want to buy.
Obama proposes more and more spending all of the time. His answer is always to spend more. How about some cuts? I am not talking about 10% of the defense budget which won't solve much anyway, but rather cuts to the big entitlement elephants in the room...Medicare and Social Security. You people on the left cover your ears and say, "la, la, la, we won't hear that, 2+2 = 5 not 4", whenever someone with a bit of good sense asks how we can spend our way out of debt. Wishing hard enough that Obama and socialism will lead us all to a brighter and happier future where everyone drinks organic wheatgrass, rides the high speed train, and gets all the electricity needed to live a first world existence from solar and wind doesn't make it so.
Slashdot Mirror
We'll squeeze the white color out of white baby seal's fur, top that off with the white pigments from dirty hippies' soy milk stash.
Yes, but we will have to beat both of them over the head with a club in order to get those items.
If you work for Microsoft then perhaps you can answer me this: Why do Visual Studio licenses have to be so darned expensive? Yes, I know about the express editions, but they are lacking in critical features that are sorely needed for serious development work. Why can't Microsoft offer the core IDE free of charge or for nominal charge (i.e. less than $100), call it supporting the platform if you want, while charging for high end add-ons like Team System instead of making those high end features a whole separate version of the IDE? There are too many different versions of what is essentially 80%+ the same product in Visual Studio. Firefox and other open source projects have shown the way with the core + add-on approach and after the Vista debacle (which had what, 8 different versions?) the message should be clear. This would also allow them to roll out important updates to the core product more quickly and easily while allowing even greater language and compiler choices in the core IDE via the add-on system. Visual Studio is nice, but it costs too damn much and it could be so much better. Does Microsoft even realize that the main thing keeping most of their technical users, and especially developers, on Windows instead of fleeing for Mac or Linux is .NET and Visual Studio? Why not press that advantage even more by making the full-featured core IDE cheaper or even free? The marketing people at Microsoft are screwing it all up (as usual) and preventing the really good ideas and smart developers from realizing the full potential and benefit of their ideas and work.
the average slashdotter is pretty gullible when it comes to machiavellian politics.
Here is some recommended reading for Slashdotters who have not read The Prince or any other works of Machiavelli.
Consumers need to make small sacrifices for the common good, even at a slight price premium
You first.
Since a computer's hard disk spins hundreds of thousands of times per hour, and can contain many copies of the mantra, anyone who wants to can turn their computer into a prayer wheel.
What if you have a solid state drive?
Get AdBlock instead and legalize online gambling. There is no need to compromise your freedoms just to avoid having to punch the monkey.
By making it legal, you can bring them onshore, where they can be taxed and regulated, just like state lotteries and privately-owned casinos.
Actually, you wouldn't need to bring them onshore to do that. Gambling can be taxed under WTO rules as long as onshore and offshore gambling are taxed equally. In fact, the US is currently under WTO sanctions because our gambling laws are at odds with our treaty obligations with regard to gambling.
Speaking of privately-owned casinos, at least Sen. Reid of Nevada has a "legitimate" reason to be a roadblock: He just doesn't want to see Vegas have any competition.
Pure cynicism if ever there was such a thing; its hard to be more blatantly biased than that.
The dumb part about Reid's objection is that the legalization of online poker would bring a lot of new players into the game. Some of 'em might even end up enjoying it so much they end up going to Vegas to play the game in meatspace.
It is not the role of government to ban activities which people might enjoy too much, even to their own detriment. The lives of individuals belong to those individuals and it is not the damn business of the State to tell two people that they cannot gamble, have sex in a peculiar way, smoke, drink etc. It was supposed to be a free country people and that means freedom to make the "wrong" choices (or choices that some might judge to be wrong) as long as such choices do not infringe upon the abilities of others to make their own free choices (i.e. no violence or coercion). I really dislike people who try to run or control the lives of other free thinking and independent adults because they represent the tyranny that our founding fathers and generations of our soldiers shed blood to escape from.
In fact there are websites in Britain where you can do just that, put out custom bets (i.e. Bin Laden, captured or killed by MM/DD/YYYY) and get other users to take you up on them. You can bet on just about anything were the outcome can be determined as long as you can find someone willing to take the opposite side.
so it's not like any of this has ever made much sense...
Politics and logic are like oil and water, they don't mix well in practice.
And how many people failed to attend college because they, or their parents, gambled away the college fund?
That is an argument which is sometimes made by the anti-gambling people, but really how many specific cases have their been where parents gambled away junior's college money? It seems to be a popular cautionary story that happens rarely in practice (i.e. a variation of the "think of the children" fallacy). This type of logical fallacy has a long and colorful history in our legislature, and it is easier to appeal to emotion rather than logic (i.e. "if you are against me then you are against the children, how can you be against the children?"), but that doesn't make the tactic right. The more that we use emotional arguments in our national policy the greater the damage that we do to our constitution and the values that our nation was founded upon.
I'm not saying gambling should be illegal, I just think it's silly to argue for gambling the perspective of the winners
Fair enough, but did you know that the US is presently in violation of the WTO treaties on trade with our present gambling laws? The treaties say that you can either ban all gambling or allow it, but that if you allow it then you must allow foreign competition (i.e. offshore internet gambling). In fact, a small caribbean nation (Antigua) actually won a WTO action against the United States on this very point and the United States is currently racking up fines and damages payable to Antigua for violating the treaty. What makes the whole thing doubly interesting is that Antigua has requested an unusual remedy, namely the privilege of ignoring US copyrights on movies, music, software, and other creative products produced in the United States.
The amazing part is that IBM is wasting this kind of money applying for a patent that has no chance of standing up in court
That is not the point. It would cost a tremendous amount of time and money to go to court, even if you would eventually win, which creates additional barriers of entry against competitors of IBM and adds to their portfolio of defensive patents. Remember that almost all patents these days are taken out for defensive purposes to fend off attacks by patent trolls and their enterprising attorneys, not to actually protect a new idea or innovation. The patent system is broken and backwards, but IBM is just playing the game. If you don't like the rules (and they are indeed stupid when it comes to software patents) then blame the government and the lawyers.
the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer.
Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I laughed out loud when I read that part of his commentary. Many of the "great works" of art and literature, or at least those that many would consider "great" and of "high culture", were produced in the age before copyright. If the sort of crap that is currently produced by Sony and others in the entertainment industry passes as "high quality culture" then they can keep it. In fact, they couldn't pay me to watch it. The previous system of wealthy patronage seems to have contributed far more high quality works to the public domain than Sony and their cronies. My response to them, to paraphrase Bill Epton, is "burn, Sony, burn".
But, mixed markets do at least approach the ideals of the vast majority of people
and yet they fail miserably every time that they have been tried. For example consider Britain during the 1970s or Latin America during the 1980s or India up until the free market reorganizations in the late 1990s. The mixed economy is one of those ideas that sounds great in principle, but fails miserably in practice and one of the great mistakes in economic policy is to judge a policy by its intentions rather than its actual results . The mixed economy idea (i.e. with government control or regulation of key industries) is full of good intentions in many cases, but we all know of a certain road that is paved with good intentions. The free market, for all of its short comings, works and it works in the worst possible conditions. Free markets allow people who don't speak the same languages, who may even hate each other, to cooperate economically and produce the greatest possible abundance of the goods and services that people most want to purchase at the most efficient prices. The mixed economy, for any non-trivial sized group of people, necessarily involves forcing some people to engage in transactions that they otherwise would NOT be willing to do in the name of "fairness" or "equality", but that is essentially against freedom. For a more in-depth discussion of some of these concepts might I suggest the following video?
I have believed the US Ethanol program is a lot wishful thinking fueled by quite questionable agendas. As the article says.
That is right. The US should be focused on improving the Fischer Tropsch process to produce synthetic liquid fuels, including pure and high quality gasoline, from our tremendous natural coal reserves. Unfortunately, as other posters have pointed out, the corn growing states have powerful Senators and lobbyists and they tend to vote early, especially in the case of the Iowa caucuses, in the presidential caucuses which means that anyone wishing to run for President of the United States must appease the corn farmers or their presidential bid will be over before it even begins.
E85 is better than gasoline
How can that be? Ethanol costs more to produce than gasoline and it gets LESS miles per gallon. From the standpoint of the consumer that is a losing proposition. Why should we pay the same or more for a gallon of fuel that will not move our vehicle the same distance as a gallon of gasoline? Even if the government subsidizes ethanol so that it is cheaper than gasoline at the pump, we would still have to stop for fuel more often and it would be economically inefficient since the government would have to borrow more or raise taxes to continue subsidizing an economically inferior option. Gasoline became the fuel of choice for good economic reasons, not because of government subsidies.
To meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy...
If ethanol is so good for the environment then why doesn't the corn lobby advocate the end of tarrifs on imported sugar cane ethanol? It is increadibly self-serving for the corn farmers to play the environmental card while at the same time supporting high tarrifs on imported sugar cane ethanol (note: I agree with the article, ethanol is a scam foisted upon the american consumer by the EPA and the corn lobby) which is superior and less environmentally damaging than their corn ethanol except that sugar caine doesn't grow in Iowa and Nebraska. Of all the lobbyists in Washington DC the corn farmers and ethanol producers are definitely among the worst IMHO. I hope the EPA puts this suggestion where it belongs, in the rubbish bin.
They were also accessible to the everyman, unlike the Tesla roadster.
I wouldn't go that far. I seem to recall that in Who Killed The Electric Car they mentioned that the EV1 was leased , but NOT sold, for $500-$700 dollars per month which is substantially higher than what "everyman" can afford to pay. If you can afford to pay that much for a lease then you can afford to lease a luxury car such as the BMW, Mercedes-Benz, or Lexus. The "everyman" lease rate is more in the $200-$400 dollar range and generally in the lower part of the range or around $300 per month. Also, look at the owners they interviewed in the movie: Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, Ed Begley, Jr. (i.e. big money Hollywood actors); hardly the "everyman" you say the car was accessible to.
I have a relatively new vehicle and it specifically states in the fuel requirements section of the owner manual that 10% (or 15% MTBE although that is largely banned now) is the maximum amount of ethanol which may be used in the fuel. It also states that using non-compliant fuels (i.e. leaded gasoline, too much alcohol, store bought additives, etc) may result in engine damage which will NOT be covered by the vehicle warranty. I suspect that this is the case for many vehicles currently being driven on American roads today. The government would not be able to mandate 15% ethanol fuels without pissing off millions of Americans who will be faced with the prospects of reduced engine and service life expectations on their current vehicles OR possibly expensive engine upgrades / modifications which almost certainly will not be covered under warranty. If they do increase the gasohol requirements then they will have to implement a long phase in period to make it politically palatable and how much difference will 5% extra ethanol make anyway? Probably not enough to justify the expense (or even the environmental benefits) of replacement (new vehicles means more new pollution to produce them) or major upgrades / overhauls of millions of existing vehicles.
Never happen. China may publicly chide their vassal, as a parent would a child, but as long as the North Koreans continue to secretly take their marching orders from Beijing the Chinese will not give up their useful lackey. Think of it like an attention button which the Chinese can press at any time in order to draw the attention towards North Korea and away from whatever the Chinese wish to do while our collective attention is averted.
who will write the reviews?
The dedicated test labs which buy/acquire these things for the sole purpose of testing them to the point of failure?
Not to mention that (a) plenty of review outlets have started honest and later devolved into "we whore ourselves for our advertisers"
That is always a possibility. The real question is how much is your time worth vs the amount of the purchase? That will vary for each individual, but rarely is it possible to get perfect information for a real world purchase decision. Generally we find out as much as we can with the amount of effort we are willing to put into researching the purchase and then we make our decision. Depending upon the value of the item and the proclivities of the buyer this could be seconds, days, weeks, months, or even years (although again there are always diminishing returns for time spent and only so much that can reasonably be found out).
just because a camera feels good in your hand doesn't mean it'll feel good in mine - in fact, the only way to see if it'll feel good in mine is to actually put it in mine.
A camera may be one of those exceptions. I don't know because I have never bought high-end cameras or photography gear. I can tell you that I generally don't buy clothes or shoes online, but even then I have made exceptions for brands and sizes that I have worn before and know will fit.
Judging by many laws / regulations etc you'd think they were written BY corporations and handed to the government to act on.
In fact, this is not far from the truth here in the United States. Does anyone actually believe that Congressmen, Senators, and their staffs actually sit down and write out 3,000+ page bills to submit to committee? Many, if not most, of the bills that come before Congress are actually written by professional lobbyists employed by firms located in and around the Washington DC area on behalf of their corporate clients. Even if the bill is written by the Congress, the budget for example, the lobby firms still submit amendments for their Congresmen and Senators to slip into the package.
Not to mention the value in being able to see the quality and try out the product before you buy it.
With all of the consumer review and testing websites, such as CNet and TomsHardware (for PCs), available these days is that even necessary anymore? The types of equipment and testing that these companies do is well beyond the sort of rigor and precision sought by most consumers (who aren't going to spend days tweaking configurations to find out that one video card has only 2 fps more than another one costing $100 less). There is only so much personal time to be put into researching a purchase and unless it is a really big ticket item, like a house or a car, most people don't spend weeks and months figuring out what they want to buy.
Obama proposes more and more spending all of the time. His answer is always to spend more. How about some cuts? I am not talking about 10% of the defense budget which won't solve much anyway, but rather cuts to the big entitlement elephants in the room...Medicare and Social Security. You people on the left cover your ears and say, "la, la, la, we won't hear that, 2+2 = 5 not 4", whenever someone with a bit of good sense asks how we can spend our way out of debt. Wishing hard enough that Obama and socialism will lead us all to a brighter and happier future where everyone drinks organic wheatgrass, rides the high speed train, and gets all the electricity needed to live a first world existence from solar and wind doesn't make it so.
Friends don't let friends run Windows without CCleaner.