When talking about closed curves bound in a given plane, you refer to the length of the border as perimeter, not circumference. Circumference is only used when talking about circles. The Maree Man has a 28km perimeter.
That was my initial knee-jerk reaction. However, I would like to know why the unit failed before I make a real decision. Several people have noted that these are (SL) ICBMs and are not designed for orbital flight. However, the differences between sub-orbital and orbital flight are not all that different (as far as environment, duration of loads and vibrations, heat flux from propulsion, etc). About the only thing that comes to mind right now is that the payload they are lifting is probably a lot less massive than their original weapon payload (hence the higher altitude for the same booster). So, the structure, propellant grain, separation seams and charges, etc were not originally designed to experience these greater accelerations. And the work to modify them to handle these greater accelerations might have been faulty. In fact, with the evidence I have right now (none), that would be my prediction for the cause of failure.
The Soviets/Russians have always done good engineering (with failures along the way as much as anyone else). With the failure of these two launches, I would not give up my fear of their past or current nuclear capabilities.
Ultimately, if you have a way of getting the digital signal to a non-digital device, then yes you will be able to make a recording. But the problem is that all digital devices will be required by law to observe the broadcast flag. So the only recordings you will be able to make are crappy VHS recordings. It won't matter if you make your own Tivo or not. The capture card you buy from your local electronics shop will also be required to honor the broadcast flag. Any devices that do not honor the broadcast flag will be illegal and considered "pirate" devices. Kind of like aftermarket cable boxes. Except, here possession of the pirate devices will be illegal and could result in fines or (dare I say it) jail time?
Exactly. I've done service work for home mechanical systems (heating, A/C, boilers, water heaters, etc) and ran into that several times. I'll come out for a furnace call, listen to the unit try to fire (exhaust fan come on, pressure switch click in, ignitor relay click in, gas valve click in, gas hissing out, no flames though) and pretty much immediately know that the problem is the ignitor (about 2 minutes so far). Then I'll monitor the voltage to the ignitor, run another cycle, see proper voltage and know the ignitor is bad (another 2 minutes). Pop the old ignitor out and the new ignitor in (hopefully 10 minutes, but could be longer depending on the furnace), run another cycle to verify proper operation (another 2 minutes) and then write up the ticket (6 minutes) for $170. Some people get mad that I've only been there 20 minutes and am charging them $170. They don't think about the experience that gets such a low repair time (although ignitors are relatively easy - other repairs are harder and catch the new guys off guard). And then there are the other costs that they don't see, vehicle costs, licensing costs, insurance costs, equipment, phones, etc, etc, etc.
Or even better, hearing a relay that is stuck and hitting it with a screwdriver to get it loose.
The oil change analogy doesn't work here. I pay someone else to change my oil, yet I do my own brake jobs. Why? Well, consider the cost... Motor Oil: $5 to $10, oil filter: $5 to $10, oil disposal fee: varies. You're already at $10 to $20, and the oil change places only charge $20 to $30. Then there's the time and hassle, sometimes the oil filter is a pain in the ass to take out because it has been tightened really hard or corroded or something. And I also have to lie on the rocks in my driveway. To me, it's worth my time and sanity to give someone else $10 to do the job.
Brakes and other repairs/maintenance are different though. I can spend $100 to get new pads and rotors for my front brakes and then spend 2 hours (or less) to install them. That job would have probably cost me $300 at a brake shop, and they would have had my car for the whole day.
Installing some new RAM is akin to installing new wiper blades. Anyone who doesn't want to take the 5 minutes to learn how to replace their wiper blades is a moron for paying someone else $20 (or whatever it is) for that service. Although RAM is a little more sensitive, it only takes 5 minutes to learn to discharge yourself before working and to not break the motherboard during installation.
Taxing the same amount of consumption as a function of the consumer's income is socialism, and one step closer to communism. I'm by no means rich - I'm probably rated, by income, at the bottom 20% of all households in my area. But I pay for the stuff I use, and I think everybody should. 1 unit of road wear is the same whether bill gates or joe sixpack incurs the wear. Why should bill gates pay $100 for his 1 unit and joe sixpack pay $1? It doesn't make any freaking sense. Who cares what percentage of their respective incomes it represents. If joe makes $20k and has $20k in expenses, then he has to use it all. If bill makes $20m and has $20k of the same expenses, he gets to save up more.
Wtf? A flat tax on gas is unfair... I'm so sick of you freaking liberals. Now every time you fill up at the gas station you have to submit an income form?
Here's the straight story: you buy more gas, you pollute more, you use the roads more, you pay more tax. Get over your "woe is me, I'm a poor mofo" whining. If you want to start arguing about including a car efficiency factor or car weight factor in the tax, fine. Because those differences actually matter. But stop complaining because someone else worked harder in life to make more money than you.
Why prevent forest fires? They're a natual way of cleansing an area and promoting new growth. I never understood why there is so much support for fighting wild fires. By trying to stop them, we are only making the situation worse. In the case of a wild fire, people should just protect their homes and structures, spray them down, build fire trenches around them, whatever - but that is it. Don't send fire teams out in the wilderness to keep the fire from burning more forest.
It sounds like you're just spouting off, making random speculations here.
1) Nope, people still buy gaming hardware to play RTSs, adventure games, sports, etc. FPSs aren't the only things that sell. 2) Normal development cycles are 6 months to 12 months. But HL2 was much more detailed than a normal game. Show me a game with as much detail as HL2 on the console. You can't. 3) Huh? What's real TV and what's videogame TV? 4) lmao 5) More people are also buying PCs... and consoles... and cars... and boats 6) Wow, you're dumb. What's all the fuss about mod chips for the consoles then? I know I have my original copy of Starcraft and Broodwar. Blizzard isn't "moving" to consoles, they're expanding to consoles. Here's an easy business tip for you: expand your customer base, expand your profits. Online games are popular with publishers because they can make a killing on them. At $15/month for 12 months, that's $180/year. Rather than the usual one time price of $50 that you'll get from regular games.
Real PC gaming isn't leaving in the near future (5 to 10 years) until something major comes along to change the whole situation around. Why would I buy a $400 PS3 when I can pop an $80 vid card into my office machine and get the same thing? Guess how much money I've spend on hardware for gaming in the last 2 years? $80 for a new vid card, and maybe $40 for another stick of ram. I still play Starcraft, and I don't own a PS2.
Your statements are all short-sighted or just plain ignorant. You're not on the wrong side (as long as you like gaming in the first place), but you are a fool.
This is very common practice in the contracting business. To the point that it is already programmed into the system. Buy $10k worth of equipment per year? Get a 5% discount. Buy $40k? Get a 15% discount. Buy $10k worth of supplies per year? Get a 3% discount.
It is sort of like a bulk discount, but it's not tied to a specific item. The items themselves have their own bulk pricing, but you get an additional discount on top of that based upon your annual purchases.
Well, I don't believe the trailer itself is interlaced. The file (as played) is a progressive source. However, it definitely appears as though they made the trailer from an interlaced source (some other digital medium perhaps). And that leaves me to ask... wtf? It looks like crap, that's for sure.
Wasn't there a story a while back about a microphone/camera combination that would listen for gun shots, figure out the source of the gun shot noise, and then have a camera zoom in on that source and take a picture?
Seems to me that once the frog is thrown into the boiling water, its skin would be scalded and its legs wouldn't work all that well. But maybe that's reading too much into it all.
As everyone else said, 120mm. I've got 2 of them in my case. Why? Because they are bigger, they move more air with less fans (more air/fan), less power, and are typically quieter for the amount of air they move. For my case, I would need to replace my 2 120mm fans with probably 4 80mm fans to get the same CFM. All the while, power and noise will increase (as well as cost).
A more serious note:
While entering the water at Canton, the Westward Ho train lost control on the wet ramp and over several seconds skidded into the rocks, and apparently also into a young boy, who started screaming, "I'm gonna die!" While the Coast Guard called for an ambulance, the boy's father was eventually located, and a physician on the scene conducted a brief examination after which the boy was well enough to walk away. Please exercise due caution when attending races of any sort.
I can just imagine the train verrrrrry slowly sliding on its side down the ramp into the water, while some boy is standing in front of the sliding train for several seconds watching as it slides towards him, not moving an inch, and then suddenly screaming "I'm gonna die!!!" when it barely touches him, and then the coast guard whips into action, beaching their 40 foot cutter in the 2 inch deep water next to the ramp to save the boy, calling for ambulances to race in and make sure that the boy's scraped knee is not life-threating.
Are you seriously arguing that the filibuster should be a legitimate means of making decisions about legislation? For the longest time this has been one of the most ridiculous activities of congress. One person should not be able to stop congress from moving on and doing their job.
However, if __enough__ people disagree with a piece of legislation, I think they should be able to delay the processing of that legislation. Perhaps by a boycott. Congress should require a certain attendance to have a vote, perhaps 85% attendance or something. Then, if a vote is coming up that has a large opposition (yet not a majority opposition), then the opposition can boycott that particular vote. For this to work, we would need designated voting dates (perhaps even times), and once a piece of legislation is up for a vote, it can't be up for a vote for another week or some time period.
This would be different from voting down a piece of legislation because it won't go back to be completely rewritten. Instead, it sticks around in its original form and can be put up for another vote at a later date. Once its supporters realize that it won't be passed in its current state, they can negotiate (with the opposition) some modifications to the legislation and resubmit it. At that point the opposition may still not like the legislation, but they are not appalled at it, and they can still vote no for the official record.
Refer to my other reply further down that talks about the imbalance of contributions and receipts for smaller rural states versus larger urban states.
The fact of the matter is that corporate subsidies and welfare payouts dwarf rural subsidies by any way you look at it. In fact, corporate subsidies dwarf welfare payouts on its own. But here we are talking about industries like the train/rail indsutry and the airline industry. These are not rural industries. (Nor can they specifically be labeled urban industries.) Your average rural farmer or rural trade worker or rural laborer does not get subsidized at all. Yet you see urban laborers receiving too much welfare.
That study is actually a bit misleading, because much of the spending in the small western states can not be offset by their comparatively small populations. Example: Let's look at Wyoming. Wyoming has less than 0.5 million people. Yet, they have 3 major interstate highways running clear across their state: I80, I90, and I25. These are major routes of passage that states all across the nation use to transport goods from north to south, from the east coast to the west coast. With a population of less than 500k, if Wyoming had to pay for these roads themselves, it would bankrupt their government. Therefore, the money they receive from the Federal Gov to maintain these roads already offsets a large portion of their income tax contribution to the Federal Gov. Yet a state like California with it's 34 million (legal) residents dwarfs Wyoming in its contribution of income tax to the Federal Government, yet it still receives similar amounts of money for upkeep of interstate highways running through its borders. Therefore, you quickly develop an imbalance of contributions to the Federal government versus receipts from the Federal government when looking at small states versus large states.
Another example (although more controversial) are some of the subsidies Wyoming receives. Wyoming's natural resources (minerals, gases, etc) are heavily subsidized from a strategic standpoint. If no subsidies existed, Wyoming would have stripped out much more of these resources than they currently have, selling them to other countries and economies. The result would have been a quick depletion of these particular natural resources in the US. So, the federal government pays Wyoming to not harvest the resources, and the result is that the US holds onto more of the resources for future needs. This is a strategic move by the Federal government to ensure that we are not left in a vulnerable position with respect to foreign countries and our natural resource needs (as we currently seem to be with oil, and the problems are apparent).
However, subsidies do exist that are not strategic and that need to be eliminated. Example: cotton subsidies. Cotton is not a strategic resource, who cares if our white shirts come from the USA or Thailand (unless they decide to lace our cotton shirts with germs, heh). Yet farmers still receive cotton subsidies. The industry is not fledgling, and could probably be streamlined even better if the subsidies were eliminated and the farmers realized they needed to reduce expenses.
Real conservatives do not believe in sustained subsidies (except, possibly, for strategic means), tax breaks, or welfare. About the only thing they might believe in is low cost health care, to ensure that the population stays healthy. Still, health care should only be partially funded by the Federal Gov so that industry still has motivation to invest in research. The only subsidies true conservatives ever support are those for fledgling industries. IE hybrid cars - if they were deemed a beneficial technology, yet were having a hard time taking off. The government can run subsidies for a few years and the industry starts growing. Once the industry has a firm foothold, the subsidies are cut off.
Bush does not represent real conservatives. He represents some sort of spend-happy, big government republican. True conservatives are not right-wing religious fanatics. They are typically religious, but they firmly believe in the separation of church and state. They realize that the system works better when this separation is in place. They believe everyone should be accountable for their own actions and that you only get out of life what you put into it.
Except that some people will buy the legit copy, but then purchase or download a cracked copy because they don't want to deal with the freaking annoying authentication. They still have a license to run Windows, so what's the problem? They have legit copies of XP Pro and XP Home, but only run the cracked copies to avoid the authentication crap.
People who live in rural areas are typically conservative... they are self-reliant and feel they are accountable for their own actions and only get out of life what they put into it.
City dwellers are typically liberal... they want a government handout and want everyone else to solve their problems for them. It's always someone else's fault, or their non-ideal upbringing, or their job stress.
So what's new? Rural votes conservative, urban votes liberal?
You know what's pathetic? Presidential elections are basically determined by only a handful of people. Los Angeles and New York City. Their numbers barely tip the scales for California and New York, who subsequently barely tip the scales for the rest of the country. If you left out LA and NYC, conservatives would have won all the elections back to the 1980s by land slides. But in these big cities, you get a bunch of poor people grouping together who want the rest of the country to give them handouts. So what do they do? They vote for liberal leaders to get into office and force the rest of the country to give them handouts.
Slashdot Mirror
When talking about closed curves bound in a given plane, you refer to the length of the border as perimeter, not circumference. Circumference is only used when talking about circles. The Maree Man has a 28km perimeter.
That was my initial knee-jerk reaction. However, I would like to know why the unit failed before I make a real decision. Several people have noted that these are (SL) ICBMs and are not designed for orbital flight. However, the differences between sub-orbital and orbital flight are not all that different (as far as environment, duration of loads and vibrations, heat flux from propulsion, etc). About the only thing that comes to mind right now is that the payload they are lifting is probably a lot less massive than their original weapon payload (hence the higher altitude for the same booster). So, the structure, propellant grain, separation seams and charges, etc were not originally designed to experience these greater accelerations. And the work to modify them to handle these greater accelerations might have been faulty. In fact, with the evidence I have right now (none), that would be my prediction for the cause of failure.
The Soviets/Russians have always done good engineering (with failures along the way as much as anyone else). With the failure of these two launches, I would not give up my fear of their past or current nuclear capabilities.
Ultimately, if you have a way of getting the digital signal to a non-digital device, then yes you will be able to make a recording. But the problem is that all digital devices will be required by law to observe the broadcast flag. So the only recordings you will be able to make are crappy VHS recordings. It won't matter if you make your own Tivo or not. The capture card you buy from your local electronics shop will also be required to honor the broadcast flag. Any devices that do not honor the broadcast flag will be illegal and considered "pirate" devices. Kind of like aftermarket cable boxes. Except, here possession of the pirate devices will be illegal and could result in fines or (dare I say it) jail time?
Exactly. I've done service work for home mechanical systems (heating, A/C, boilers, water heaters, etc) and ran into that several times. I'll come out for a furnace call, listen to the unit try to fire (exhaust fan come on, pressure switch click in, ignitor relay click in, gas valve click in, gas hissing out, no flames though) and pretty much immediately know that the problem is the ignitor (about 2 minutes so far). Then I'll monitor the voltage to the ignitor, run another cycle, see proper voltage and know the ignitor is bad (another 2 minutes). Pop the old ignitor out and the new ignitor in (hopefully 10 minutes, but could be longer depending on the furnace), run another cycle to verify proper operation (another 2 minutes) and then write up the ticket (6 minutes) for $170. Some people get mad that I've only been there 20 minutes and am charging them $170. They don't think about the experience that gets such a low repair time (although ignitors are relatively easy - other repairs are harder and catch the new guys off guard). And then there are the other costs that they don't see, vehicle costs, licensing costs, insurance costs, equipment, phones, etc, etc, etc.
Or even better, hearing a relay that is stuck and hitting it with a screwdriver to get it loose.
The oil change analogy doesn't work here. I pay someone else to change my oil, yet I do my own brake jobs. Why? Well, consider the cost ... Motor Oil: $5 to $10, oil filter: $5 to $10, oil disposal fee: varies. You're already at $10 to $20, and the oil change places only charge $20 to $30. Then there's the time and hassle, sometimes the oil filter is a pain in the ass to take out because it has been tightened really hard or corroded or something. And I also have to lie on the rocks in my driveway. To me, it's worth my time and sanity to give someone else $10 to do the job.
Brakes and other repairs/maintenance are different though. I can spend $100 to get new pads and rotors for my front brakes and then spend 2 hours (or less) to install them. That job would have probably cost me $300 at a brake shop, and they would have had my car for the whole day.
Installing some new RAM is akin to installing new wiper blades. Anyone who doesn't want to take the 5 minutes to learn how to replace their wiper blades is a moron for paying someone else $20 (or whatever it is) for that service. Although RAM is a little more sensitive, it only takes 5 minutes to learn to discharge yourself before working and to not break the motherboard during installation.
Taxing the same amount of consumption as a function of the consumer's income is socialism, and one step closer to communism. I'm by no means rich - I'm probably rated, by income, at the bottom 20% of all households in my area. But I pay for the stuff I use, and I think everybody should. 1 unit of road wear is the same whether bill gates or joe sixpack incurs the wear. Why should bill gates pay $100 for his 1 unit and joe sixpack pay $1? It doesn't make any freaking sense. Who cares what percentage of their respective incomes it represents. If joe makes $20k and has $20k in expenses, then he has to use it all. If bill makes $20m and has $20k of the same expenses, he gets to save up more.
Wtf? A flat tax on gas is unfair ... I'm so sick of you freaking liberals. Now every time you fill up at the gas station you have to submit an income form?
Here's the straight story: you buy more gas, you pollute more, you use the roads more, you pay more tax. Get over your "woe is me, I'm a poor mofo" whining. If you want to start arguing about including a car efficiency factor or car weight factor in the tax, fine. Because those differences actually matter. But stop complaining because someone else worked harder in life to make more money than you.
Sheesh.
Why prevent forest fires? They're a natual way of cleansing an area and promoting new growth. I never understood why there is so much support for fighting wild fires. By trying to stop them, we are only making the situation worse. In the case of a wild fire, people should just protect their homes and structures, spray them down, build fire trenches around them, whatever - but that is it. Don't send fire teams out in the wilderness to keep the fire from burning more forest.
Why would I pay over $1000 for this rig when I can pick up 2 Dell 1905s for $250 a piece?
Actually, there are lawn services that also chemically treat your lawn to make it looker greener, maybe even thicker. Pretty sick, eh?
It's called TruGreen ChemLawn and they make millions of dollars each year off this kind of stupidity.
http://www.trugreen.com/
It sounds like you're just spouting off, making random speculations here.
... and consoles ... and cars ... and boats
1) Nope, people still buy gaming hardware to play RTSs, adventure games, sports, etc. FPSs aren't the only things that sell.
2) Normal development cycles are 6 months to 12 months. But HL2 was much more detailed than a normal game. Show me a game with as much detail as HL2 on the console. You can't.
3) Huh? What's real TV and what's videogame TV?
4) lmao
5) More people are also buying PCs
6) Wow, you're dumb. What's all the fuss about mod chips for the consoles then? I know I have my original copy of Starcraft and Broodwar. Blizzard isn't "moving" to consoles, they're expanding to consoles. Here's an easy business tip for you: expand your customer base, expand your profits. Online games are popular with publishers because they can make a killing on them. At $15/month for 12 months, that's $180/year. Rather than the usual one time price of $50 that you'll get from regular games.
Real PC gaming isn't leaving in the near future (5 to 10 years) until something major comes along to change the whole situation around. Why would I buy a $400 PS3 when I can pop an $80 vid card into my office machine and get the same thing? Guess how much money I've spend on hardware for gaming in the last 2 years? $80 for a new vid card, and maybe $40 for another stick of ram. I still play Starcraft, and I don't own a PS2.
Your statements are all short-sighted or just plain ignorant. You're not on the wrong side (as long as you like gaming in the first place), but you are a fool.
This is very common practice in the contracting business. To the point that it is already programmed into the system. Buy $10k worth of equipment per year? Get a 5% discount. Buy $40k? Get a 15% discount. Buy $10k worth of supplies per year? Get a 3% discount.
It is sort of like a bulk discount, but it's not tied to a specific item. The items themselves have their own bulk pricing, but you get an additional discount on top of that based upon your annual purchases.
Despite what you may think, 2/3, 4/6, and 8/12 are actually different numbers.
Well, I don't believe the trailer itself is interlaced. The file (as played) is a progressive source. However, it definitely appears as though they made the trailer from an interlaced source (some other digital medium perhaps). And that leaves me to ask ... wtf? It looks like crap, that's for sure.
Wasn't there a story a while back about a microphone/camera combination that would listen for gun shots, figure out the source of the gun shot noise, and then have a camera zoom in on that source and take a picture?
Seems to me that once the frog is thrown into the boiling water, its skin would be scalded and its legs wouldn't work all that well. But maybe that's reading too much into it all.
As everyone else said, 120mm. I've got 2 of them in my case. Why? Because they are bigger, they move more air with less fans (more air/fan), less power, and are typically quieter for the amount of air they move. For my case, I would need to replace my 2 120mm fans with probably 4 80mm fans to get the same CFM. All the while, power and noise will increase (as well as cost).
The Heart - blatently stolen from Natural Selection's hive.
The best part was at the end of the article:
A more serious note:
While entering the water at Canton, the Westward Ho train lost control on the wet ramp and over several seconds skidded into the rocks, and apparently also into a young boy, who started screaming, "I'm gonna die!" While the Coast Guard called for an ambulance, the boy's father was eventually located, and a physician on the scene conducted a brief examination after which the boy was well enough to walk away. Please exercise due caution when attending races of any sort.
I can just imagine the train verrrrrry slowly sliding on its side down the ramp into the water, while some boy is standing in front of the sliding train for several seconds watching as it slides towards him, not moving an inch, and then suddenly screaming "I'm gonna die!!!" when it barely touches him, and then the coast guard whips into action, beaching their 40 foot cutter in the 2 inch deep water next to the ramp to save the boy, calling for ambulances to race in and make sure that the boy's scraped knee is not life-threating.
Are you seriously arguing that the filibuster should be a legitimate means of making decisions about legislation? For the longest time this has been one of the most ridiculous activities of congress. One person should not be able to stop congress from moving on and doing their job.
However, if __enough__ people disagree with a piece of legislation, I think they should be able to delay the processing of that legislation. Perhaps by a boycott. Congress should require a certain attendance to have a vote, perhaps 85% attendance or something. Then, if a vote is coming up that has a large opposition (yet not a majority opposition), then the opposition can boycott that particular vote. For this to work, we would need designated voting dates (perhaps even times), and once a piece of legislation is up for a vote, it can't be up for a vote for another week or some time period.
This would be different from voting down a piece of legislation because it won't go back to be completely rewritten. Instead, it sticks around in its original form and can be put up for another vote at a later date. Once its supporters realize that it won't be passed in its current state, they can negotiate (with the opposition) some modifications to the legislation and resubmit it. At that point the opposition may still not like the legislation, but they are not appalled at it, and they can still vote no for the official record.
No, netstumbler is a new game where you stumble over nets.
Refer to my other reply further down that talks about the imbalance of contributions and receipts for smaller rural states versus larger urban states.
The fact of the matter is that corporate subsidies and welfare payouts dwarf rural subsidies by any way you look at it. In fact, corporate subsidies dwarf welfare payouts on its own. But here we are talking about industries like the train/rail indsutry and the airline industry. These are not rural industries. (Nor can they specifically be labeled urban industries.) Your average rural farmer or rural trade worker or rural laborer does not get subsidized at all. Yet you see urban laborers receiving too much welfare.
Refer to http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-sm063099.html on corporate subsidies.
That study is actually a bit misleading, because much of the spending in the small western states can not be offset by their comparatively small populations. Example: Let's look at Wyoming. Wyoming has less than 0.5 million people. Yet, they have 3 major interstate highways running clear across their state: I80, I90, and I25. These are major routes of passage that states all across the nation use to transport goods from north to south, from the east coast to the west coast. With a population of less than 500k, if Wyoming had to pay for these roads themselves, it would bankrupt their government. Therefore, the money they receive from the Federal Gov to maintain these roads already offsets a large portion of their income tax contribution to the Federal Gov. Yet a state like California with it's 34 million (legal) residents dwarfs Wyoming in its contribution of income tax to the Federal Government, yet it still receives similar amounts of money for upkeep of interstate highways running through its borders. Therefore, you quickly develop an imbalance of contributions to the Federal government versus receipts from the Federal government when looking at small states versus large states.
Another example (although more controversial) are some of the subsidies Wyoming receives. Wyoming's natural resources (minerals, gases, etc) are heavily subsidized from a strategic standpoint. If no subsidies existed, Wyoming would have stripped out much more of these resources than they currently have, selling them to other countries and economies. The result would have been a quick depletion of these particular natural resources in the US. So, the federal government pays Wyoming to not harvest the resources, and the result is that the US holds onto more of the resources for future needs. This is a strategic move by the Federal government to ensure that we are not left in a vulnerable position with respect to foreign countries and our natural resource needs (as we currently seem to be with oil, and the problems are apparent).
However, subsidies do exist that are not strategic and that need to be eliminated. Example: cotton subsidies. Cotton is not a strategic resource, who cares if our white shirts come from the USA or Thailand (unless they decide to lace our cotton shirts with germs, heh). Yet farmers still receive cotton subsidies. The industry is not fledgling, and could probably be streamlined even better if the subsidies were eliminated and the farmers realized they needed to reduce expenses.
Real conservatives do not believe in sustained subsidies (except, possibly, for strategic means), tax breaks, or welfare. About the only thing they might believe in is low cost health care, to ensure that the population stays healthy. Still, health care should only be partially funded by the Federal Gov so that industry still has motivation to invest in research. The only subsidies true conservatives ever support are those for fledgling industries. IE hybrid cars - if they were deemed a beneficial technology, yet were having a hard time taking off. The government can run subsidies for a few years and the industry starts growing. Once the industry has a firm foothold, the subsidies are cut off.
Bush does not represent real conservatives. He represents some sort of spend-happy, big government republican. True conservatives are not right-wing religious fanatics. They are typically religious, but they firmly believe in the separation of church and state. They realize that the system works better when this separation is in place. They believe everyone should be accountable for their own actions and that you only get out of life what you put into it.
Except that some people will buy the legit copy, but then purchase or download a cracked copy because they don't want to deal with the freaking annoying authentication. They still have a license to run Windows, so what's the problem? They have legit copies of XP Pro and XP Home, but only run the cracked copies to avoid the authentication crap.
People who live in rural areas are typically conservative ... they are self-reliant and feel they are accountable for their own actions and only get out of life what they put into it.
... they want a government handout and want everyone else to solve their problems for them. It's always someone else's fault, or their non-ideal upbringing, or their job stress.
City dwellers are typically liberal
So what's new? Rural votes conservative, urban votes liberal?
You know what's pathetic? Presidential elections are basically determined by only a handful of people. Los Angeles and New York City. Their numbers barely tip the scales for California and New York, who subsequently barely tip the scales for the rest of the country. If you left out LA and NYC, conservatives would have won all the elections back to the 1980s by land slides. But in these big cities, you get a bunch of poor people grouping together who want the rest of the country to give them handouts. So what do they do? They vote for liberal leaders to get into office and force the rest of the country to give them handouts.