Also, evolution isn't a gospel that is preached. It is a scientific fact that can be readily examined by anyone who is genuinely curious about the way the world actually works.
That's funny. And all this time and in everything I've read evolution has been described as just a theory. Do you speak for all scientists who disagree and say its still a theory? By the way, evolution is preached, all to heavily considering it is just a theory. If it isn't a theory then people need to start calling it a law, right? I've never seen that happen though.
They are rules governing a particular well bounded model. They arent a set of commandments etched into the fabric of the universe. They also dont contradict evolutionary theory whatsoever. What I assume you are thinking about is the origin of life, rather than speciation. The theory of evolution has little to say about the origin of life.
The theory of evolution entails the origins of life. It is all related as far as the groups of people who disagree or agree with it. It mostly stemmed from what Darwin hypothesized but scientists have added to that to the point where they hypothesize that lightning started amino acids to form that led us to exist. But in comparison to cell theory that hypothesis is contradictory because amino acids aren't living cells.
Your problem is that your only understanding of evolution is the self-deluding and ignorant propaganda of the intelligent design "movement".
That's funny too. If I swap "intelligent design" and "evolution" that statement would apply to *you*. By the way, I don't adhere to the intelligent design movement. I have my own beliefs that may be very similar but I haven't ever claimed I agree with them so joke is on you.
Of course 65 million years has to be right. We created our own measuring stick and since humans are perfect then our measuring sticks must be perfect too. We are always right about what we have to guess about, especially things that happened so long ago there is no human record of them. A little arrogant? Of course not.
The problem with the statement is that there is no way to challenge it. You can't prove it, I can't disprove it, at best it's uninteresting, and at worst it's meaningless.
Then why not ignore it and mind your own business? Why give it lip service if you don't think it is credible? I think not being able to prove something is better than thinking you proved something with evidence when you really didn't. Then you just look like an ass. Also, a lot of the evidence that scientists use for evolution can be viewed another way as evidence for Creation. By the way, what ever happened to the 3 rules of cell theory, namely the one about all cells can only come from another living cell? That is being taught in the first few days of biology classes but then evolution is taught as well which conflicts with that. Tell your friends to get their story straight before preaching evolution.
why was this informative? It would have been MORE informative had he actually provided the answer to ridiculous lawsuits instead of saying what isn't the answer.
Companies should be forced to include, with your electronics purchase, two small parts likely to fail early.
"Small" should be replaced with "inexpensive" since 1) small parts can be very expensive and obviously increase the price of the item by enough that most people may rethink the purchase and 2) usually it is the cheap components that fail early.
I know a lot of atheists who seek to suppress their neighbors' and society's faith, as the first amendment doesn't allow.
Atheists think since they don't have a religion that no one else is allowed one either despite the freedom of religion in this country (which is rare in this world). Christians don't force atheists to practice anything. Atheists may think they are forced into some kind of religious practice just because they see the 10 Commandments posted somewhere but they aren't despite all complaining they do, therefore they still have freedom of religion (or no religion as the case may be).
Ironically though, when atheists fight to suppress a Christian's faith by removing the ability to pray in a public school or to mention God in a speech the atheist doesn't even realize they are suppressing freedom of religion because the Christians no longer can practice their religion (and in some cases they are punished like being expelled from school, but usually they are just hushed like it is something bad). Atheists actively try to stop a Christian from practicing but a Christian passively supports various religious aspects of their faith thereby not forcing those who do not agree to do anything they do not want to do. An atheists who feels like they must do something to conform can't cry out there is a violation of freedom of religion. Unless they are specifically and physically forced to do something then it doesn't count. A court can't (or at least shouldn't) rule on feelings: "I feel left out. Tell them to stop practicing their religion since I don't have one."
By the way, Christ did teach to spread the faith. You need to realize that what you think is oppression maybe just spreading the faith. You obviously have a bias against Christians so it wouldn't surprise me if the least little comment that you hear about Christ appears to you as being oppression. Just so you know, I have nothing against gays and atheists as long as they don't try(relentlessly) to push their beliefs (or lack thereof) onto the rest of society. They can live in their homes and work in public and act like any other citizen but when they push their beliefs and lifestyles onto everyone else is where I have the problem. If you think that is being hypocritical because Christians try to spread their faith as well, just remember, there is no Christian pride parade in any city (if there was I'm sure the atheists would be up in arms and accuse the local city council of favoring a religion). The atheists can't accuse the Christians of spreading their faith, with a parade for example, because the atheists would instead complain about local gov't favoring a religion. Atheists just can't decide what to complain about first.
The level of development for a country does not dictate the level of religion in a society. As time goes on a country should increase its level of faith and religious involvement (just due to word of mouth and population growth); those that totally disregard God will pay the consequences (Roman empire anyone?). Religion gives people hope, a moral and ethical code, and something to lean on. If you can't figure out why that would be so popular in any country then you have a problem. Just because you may not think you need a religion doesn't mean no one else has a reason to need it. If you have no idea why religion is so powerful in this country why continue to be ignorant instead of asking someone to find out their personal answer? You may be surprised.
I find it amazing that they can find an object which emits absolutely no light, halfway across the galaxy, and yet it's still so hard to find planets. I know they find the black holes by their accretion discs, but I still think it's remarkable.
I agree, however to clarify what you said, it's the fact that black holes emit no *visible* light. If they were totally dark then they probably would be just as hard to find as planets, maybe even harder (you can still rely on gravitational effects which they often use as well, maybe more often than the radiation emittance). Since planets don't emit anything and (as far as I know) can only be detected through gravitational effects they are hard to find. I don't think there is any argument with that. Luckily black holes aren't totally black as Hawking discovered (hence the name Hawking radiation) so they can be easier to find than planets...maybe their name should be changed to Almost Black Holes?
Still I cannot fault the GP - such "speculation" is what drives the whole scientific process anyway. It's the first step. If only everyone would back up their pet hypothesis with experimentation we'd advance our knowledge even faster!
Exactly, because Einstein verified his theories through experimentation we have advanced so much faster because of it. He wasn't even in his field either.
Concerning VCF, a lot of the money spent was on hardware and the hardware was able to be reallocated and thus the money wasn't necessarily wasted (in defense of SAIC, requirements were always changing as well as management on the FBI's side so they were hitting a moving target). The other part of the money was in labor and in regard to the UK project, given what they need to do, a large part (maybe 50%?) could just be labor costs, especially if they have to do some development work and I'm sure they will. I'm not saying I can explain the huge monetary number but just remember that you have to take into account labor, hardware, software, licensing, and maybe travel time (if it can be billed), and markup on contracting work. I didn't read the article yet (surprised?) but if requirements or scope changes this can drastically affect the bottom line.
yeah because computer software models are bug-free like all other software applications that humans write. And the same people who write them will be the ones who use them and will be the ones who analyze the data to create conclusions in order to get grant money and make a name for themselves. Can you say "separation of duties" issue?
Why does the government, esp. the DoD even use windows in the first place? I see 3 kinds of users of goverment computers:
1. The secretary level(basic Word, Excel,..). Something else would work fine.
2. The Critical Service Level. Windows should be driven far away
3. The Scientific User. They mostly use Linux anyway. The one exception is CAD.
So only the CAD'ers might need Vista, but they probably don't. So why does the gov care? And did I make a mistake in the list?
Windows is used because a lot of people are stupid. They use it at home and therefore they don't know how to use anything else. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. And even though they may use it at home they may not do so proficiently. I have been involved with some users in the DOJ for the last few years and I see all sorts from those who don't know how to use a web browser to those who know about ODBC and Java programming. Those users I know are using Windows XP because many of the programs they need to run are only available on Windows (in addition to the familiarity reason I mentioned above). There are more than just scientific users and secretaries in the gov't and the users I have been speaking of do not fall into those 2 categories and they use Windows because they don't fit into those categories where some other OS could be used. Windows is also used on the backend due to various apps only running on the Windows platform. Realize Windows isn't used everywhere in the gov't but it does have its place for certain functions.
Censorship is an ethical cancer. There can be no legitimate justification for it. This will not stop either the corporations or the legislators from implementing as much of it as they can get away with.
I could say the exact same thing about political correctness.
Does killing a convicted murderer or rapist bring back those who were killed or totally remove the feelings the rape victims feel? No. But ending the life of the convicted serves 2 purposes with 1) being that it is punishment and 2) it serves as justice at least in the US and helps people feel better about what happened to them. The justice angle may not matter too much in Iraq or maybe it will, I don't know. As far #1, punishment by death is practiced by many countries and although some people view dying as a way out of punishment no one can experience more punishment in prison than what they experience in Hell upon committing a sin w/o repentance; that is the ultimate punishment and it is also cheapest for society.
since they think that because the earth is warming up it is due to something actually on the Earth. As with evidence that supposedly supports evolution, scientists need to take another look and remove their heads from their asses before saying anything else. Just because the Earth is warmer doesn't mean the source is actually on the Earth. We do have a big fireball less than a 100 million miles away that waxes and wanes in heat output (sunspot cycles). Maybe scientists should take a look at that instead.
By a small minority's standards the gov't has already passed laws for religion thus seemingly violating the first amendment. Unfortunately for their argument the gov't hasn't passed any law for any religion; they just allow people to practice their religion wherever they want and the aforementioned minority takes that as supporting a particular religion. But without a law being passed in those cases the freedom of religion still stands despite what the aforementioned minority thinks in their small collective mind.
Ironically, that minority wants to prevent practice of religion (though w/o passing a law) because they think it violates their freedom to not have a religion and for those who do want a religion that behavior actually prevents freedom of religion just because of the fact that you get punished (loss of job, school expulsion, etc.) by someone (minor forms of persecution basically); the punishment just isn't handed down by the legal system (yet).
This may explain why humans live twice as long as they "should".
We live way shorter lives than we are capable (or at least once capable). A few thousand years ago people were living 700 years which is how the world's population was even able to be start (and initially be sustained) because the few people who were living had to seed the earth. A woman can only be pregnant so many times and of course each time is almost a year long so it would to take (and did take) a woman living many times longer than usual in order to have enough babies to grow the population from a number of literally 5 or 6 people. Of course, once the population was seeded it took off but without that initial long-term burst it wouldn't have been possible. Also, as more people came into existence the life span for a person became smaller otherwise the world would have been overrun centuries ago. Obviously, there was a fine balance there between living long enough to procreate but then not living too long or else you run out of space. Since the human race has been able to overcome *some* limitations imposed by a higher power we are once again running into a population explosion.
On the opposite end of the temperature divide, the species living inside the core of Sol already have cold fusion and use it regularly. It's too bad your whole premise relies on evolution being real. There are studies out there that show that the time required for the human species to evolve doesn't equal the age of the Earth, in fact it outlives the age of the Earth thereby making evolution not possible. Making the proteins hot doesn't make them evolve faster; in fact they might just evaporate. http://evolution-facts.org/Ev-Crunch/c05.htm
Your mom has a cell plan where she is charged for incoming text messages if they aren't from someone on the same network? Considering it's your mom it may not be anything to worry about but otherwise I'd say that isn't a good plan. Who still charges for incoming text messages to begin with? That's almost as bad as charging for incoming phone calls.
1. Why do you presume it's Microsoft's responsibility for making drivers for your motherboard? They have generic drivers but it sounds like you wanted the manufacturer's drivers for your board. Do you actually think Gigabyte waits for MS to make a driver for a Gigabyte motherboard before Gigabyte can ship their boards? Gigabyte is responsible for making the drivers and I ran into the same problem you did: no drivers for Vista for my Gigabyte model. Luckily I was installing Vista in a VM and didn't need those drivers since VMWare presented Vista with everything it needed which leads me into your second complaint.
2. You say Vista is slow? Although I didn't test it that much (I played some of the built-in games and looked around the Control Panel) I can say for that much that it is fast and I was even in a VM. As a native OS I'm sure it would be even better and I'm running on an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ with a gigabyte of RAM (the VM had about 400 megs to work with though).
3. Unfortunately I can't comment on Aero because it was turned off due to Vista thinking my graphics card sucks. Although it does compared to most cards Vista thought it sucked more because VMWare only presented a basic graphics card to it. It was annoying though that Aero was turned off automatically and I didn't know how to turn it on (if that's even possible) so I could at least see it. Maybe that is why my experience wasn't too bad as far as Vista's speed since Aero was off, however compared to you that wouldn't be the difference since Aero was off for you too.
4. Can't comment on this one.
5. I never had issues and I was in and out of the Computer Mgmt snap-in and a handful of others, as well as playing the games (with no HW acceleration no less). The UAC was a bit annoying though since I couldn't turn it off but I wondered what its point was since to me it seemed like any user could just click Continue and get around it.
That's assuming you don't kill yourself first by DUI or if you even make it to prison considering the amount of time a case takes to make it through the court system. Not to mention the sentences that are handed out don't correlate with the crimes that much and a DUI could dictate only a few months incarceration although if you kill someone then you get more. All that is retroactive though; this system is proactive since they are trying to prevent you from drinking more before you even get into the DUI state. If you aren't one to go overboard then this shouldn't be an issue; if you are one to go overboard then you now have someone who will control your drinking since you aren't someone who can do it on your own. You could say those types of people need a little hand-holding like a little baby because they aren't mature enough to do it themselves.
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Also, evolution isn't a gospel that is preached. It is a scientific fact that can be readily examined by anyone who is genuinely curious about the way the world actually works.
That's funny. And all this time and in everything I've read evolution has been described as just a theory. Do you speak for all scientists who disagree and say its still a theory? By the way, evolution is preached, all to heavily considering it is just a theory. If it isn't a theory then people need to start calling it a law, right? I've never seen that happen though.
They are rules governing a particular well bounded model. They arent a set of commandments etched into the fabric of the universe. They also dont contradict evolutionary theory whatsoever. What I assume you are thinking about is the origin of life, rather than speciation. The theory of evolution has little to say about the origin of life.
The theory of evolution entails the origins of life. It is all related as far as the groups of people who disagree or agree with it. It mostly stemmed from what Darwin hypothesized but scientists have added to that to the point where they hypothesize that lightning started amino acids to form that led us to exist. But in comparison to cell theory that hypothesis is contradictory because amino acids aren't living cells.
Your problem is that your only understanding of evolution is the self-deluding and ignorant propaganda of the intelligent design "movement".
That's funny too. If I swap "intelligent design" and "evolution" that statement would apply to *you*. By the way, I don't adhere to the intelligent design movement. I have my own beliefs that may be very similar but I haven't ever claimed I agree with them so joke is on you.
Of course 65 million years has to be right. We created our own measuring stick and since humans are perfect then our measuring sticks must be perfect too. We are always right about what we have to guess about, especially things that happened so long ago there is no human record of them. A little arrogant? Of course not.
The problem with the statement is that there is no way to challenge it. You can't prove it, I can't disprove it, at best it's uninteresting, and at worst it's meaningless.
Then why not ignore it and mind your own business? Why give it lip service if you don't think it is credible? I think not being able to prove something is better than thinking you proved something with evidence when you really didn't. Then you just look like an ass. Also, a lot of the evidence that scientists use for evolution can be viewed another way as evidence for Creation. By the way, what ever happened to the 3 rules of cell theory, namely the one about all cells can only come from another living cell? That is being taught in the first few days of biology classes but then evolution is taught as well which conflicts with that. Tell your friends to get their story straight before preaching evolution.
why was this informative? It would have been MORE informative had he actually provided the answer to ridiculous lawsuits instead of saying what isn't the answer.
Companies should be forced to include, with your electronics purchase, two small parts likely to fail early.
"Small" should be replaced with "inexpensive" since 1) small parts can be very expensive and obviously increase the price of the item by enough that most people may rethink the purchase and 2) usually it is the cheap components that fail early.
Atheists think since they don't have a religion that no one else is allowed one either despite the freedom of religion in this country (which is rare in this world). Christians don't force atheists to practice anything. Atheists may think they are forced into some kind of religious practice just because they see the 10 Commandments posted somewhere but they aren't despite all complaining they do, therefore they still have freedom of religion (or no religion as the case may be).
Ironically though, when atheists fight to suppress a Christian's faith by removing the ability to pray in a public school or to mention God in a speech the atheist doesn't even realize they are suppressing freedom of religion because the Christians no longer can practice their religion (and in some cases they are punished like being expelled from school, but usually they are just hushed like it is something bad). Atheists actively try to stop a Christian from practicing but a Christian passively supports various religious aspects of their faith thereby not forcing those who do not agree to do anything they do not want to do. An atheists who feels like they must do something to conform can't cry out there is a violation of freedom of religion. Unless they are specifically and physically forced to do something then it doesn't count. A court can't (or at least shouldn't) rule on feelings: "I feel left out. Tell them to stop practicing their religion since I don't have one."
By the way, Christ did teach to spread the faith. You need to realize that what you think is oppression maybe just spreading the faith. You obviously have a bias against Christians so it wouldn't surprise me if the least little comment that you hear about Christ appears to you as being oppression. Just so you know, I have nothing against gays and atheists as long as they don't try(relentlessly) to push their beliefs (or lack thereof) onto the rest of society. They can live in their homes and work in public and act like any other citizen but when they push their beliefs and lifestyles onto everyone else is where I have the problem. If you think that is being hypocritical because Christians try to spread their faith as well, just remember, there is no Christian pride parade in any city (if there was I'm sure the atheists would be up in arms and accuse the local city council of favoring a religion). The atheists can't accuse the Christians of spreading their faith, with a parade for example, because the atheists would instead complain about local gov't favoring a religion. Atheists just can't decide what to complain about first.
The level of development for a country does not dictate the level of religion in a society. As time goes on a country should increase its level of faith and religious involvement (just due to word of mouth and population growth); those that totally disregard God will pay the consequences (Roman empire anyone?). Religion gives people hope, a moral and ethical code, and something to lean on. If you can't figure out why that would be so popular in any country then you have a problem. Just because you may not think you need a religion doesn't mean no one else has a reason to need it. If you have no idea why religion is so powerful in this country why continue to be ignorant instead of asking someone to find out their personal answer? You may be surprised.
Vista (and be forced to use it) than listen to propaganda by an ex-VP who is a Democrat.
I find it amazing that they can find an object which emits absolutely no light, halfway across the galaxy, and yet it's still so hard to find planets. I know they find the black holes by their accretion discs, but I still think it's remarkable.
I agree, however to clarify what you said, it's the fact that black holes emit no *visible* light. If they were totally dark then they probably would be just as hard to find as planets, maybe even harder (you can still rely on gravitational effects which they often use as well, maybe more often than the radiation emittance). Since planets don't emit anything and (as far as I know) can only be detected through gravitational effects they are hard to find. I don't think there is any argument with that. Luckily black holes aren't totally black as Hawking discovered (hence the name Hawking radiation) so they can be easier to find than planets...maybe their name should be changed to Almost Black Holes?
Still I cannot fault the GP - such "speculation" is what drives the whole scientific process anyway. It's the first step. If only everyone would back up their pet hypothesis with experimentation we'd advance our knowledge even faster!
Exactly, because Einstein verified his theories through experimentation we have advanced so much faster because of it. He wasn't even in his field either.
Concerning VCF, a lot of the money spent was on hardware and the hardware was able to be reallocated and thus the money wasn't necessarily wasted (in defense of SAIC, requirements were always changing as well as management on the FBI's side so they were hitting a moving target). The other part of the money was in labor and in regard to the UK project, given what they need to do, a large part (maybe 50%?) could just be labor costs, especially if they have to do some development work and I'm sure they will. I'm not saying I can explain the huge monetary number but just remember that you have to take into account labor, hardware, software, licensing, and maybe travel time (if it can be billed), and markup on contracting work. I didn't read the article yet (surprised?) but if requirements or scope changes this can drastically affect the bottom line.
One of the reasons we need computer models.
yeah because computer software models are bug-free like all other software applications that humans write. And the same people who write them will be the ones who use them and will be the ones who analyze the data to create conclusions in order to get grant money and make a name for themselves. Can you say "separation of duties" issue?
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a class on "Group sex: sharing can be caring" to teach to third graders.
Don't you work at an all boys school?
Why does the government, esp. the DoD even use windows in the first place? I see 3 kinds of users of goverment computers:
1. The secretary level(basic Word, Excel,..). Something else would work fine.
2. The Critical Service Level. Windows should be driven far away
3. The Scientific User. They mostly use Linux anyway. The one exception is CAD.
So only the CAD'ers might need Vista, but they probably don't. So why does the gov care? And did I make a mistake in the list?
Windows is used because a lot of people are stupid. They use it at home and therefore they don't know how to use anything else. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. And even though they may use it at home they may not do so proficiently. I have been involved with some users in the DOJ for the last few years and I see all sorts from those who don't know how to use a web browser to those who know about ODBC and Java programming. Those users I know are using Windows XP because many of the programs they need to run are only available on Windows (in addition to the familiarity reason I mentioned above). There are more than just scientific users and secretaries in the gov't and the users I have been speaking of do not fall into those 2 categories and they use Windows because they don't fit into those categories where some other OS could be used. Windows is also used on the backend due to various apps only running on the Windows platform. Realize Windows isn't used everywhere in the gov't but it does have its place for certain functions.
Censorship is an ethical cancer. There can be no legitimate justification for it. This will not stop either the corporations or the legislators from implementing as much of it as they can get away with.
I could say the exact same thing about political correctness.
Does killing a convicted murderer or rapist bring back those who were killed or totally remove the feelings the rape victims feel? No. But ending the life of the convicted serves 2 purposes with 1) being that it is punishment and 2) it serves as justice at least in the US and helps people feel better about what happened to them. The justice angle may not matter too much in Iraq or maybe it will, I don't know. As far #1, punishment by death is practiced by many countries and although some people view dying as a way out of punishment no one can experience more punishment in prison than what they experience in Hell upon committing a sin w/o repentance; that is the ultimate punishment and it is also cheapest for society.
since they think that because the earth is warming up it is due to something actually on the Earth. As with evidence that supposedly supports evolution, scientists need to take another look and remove their heads from their asses before saying anything else. Just because the Earth is warmer doesn't mean the source is actually on the Earth. We do have a big fireball less than a 100 million miles away that waxes and wanes in heat output (sunspot cycles). Maybe scientists should take a look at that instead.
By a small minority's standards the gov't has already passed laws for religion thus seemingly violating the first amendment. Unfortunately for their argument the gov't hasn't passed any law for any religion; they just allow people to practice their religion wherever they want and the aforementioned minority takes that as supporting a particular religion. But without a law being passed in those cases the freedom of religion still stands despite what the aforementioned minority thinks in their small collective mind.
Ironically, that minority wants to prevent practice of religion (though w/o passing a law) because they think it violates their freedom to not have a religion and for those who do want a religion that behavior actually prevents freedom of religion just because of the fact that you get punished (loss of job, school expulsion, etc.) by someone (minor forms of persecution basically); the punishment just isn't handed down by the legal system (yet).
This may explain why humans live twice as long as they "should".
We live way shorter lives than we are capable (or at least once capable). A few thousand years ago people were living 700 years which is how the world's population was even able to be start (and initially be sustained) because the few people who were living had to seed the earth. A woman can only be pregnant so many times and of course each time is almost a year long so it would to take (and did take) a woman living many times longer than usual in order to have enough babies to grow the population from a number of literally 5 or 6 people. Of course, once the population was seeded it took off but without that initial long-term burst it wouldn't have been possible. Also, as more people came into existence the life span for a person became smaller otherwise the world would have been overrun centuries ago. Obviously, there was a fine balance there between living long enough to procreate but then not living too long or else you run out of space. Since the human race has been able to overcome *some* limitations imposed by a higher power we are once again running into a population explosion.
Have you seen some of the sex toys they've been coming out with lately?
The baker must have stolen the recipe from someone else, or they put some special ingredient in it that made everyone really happy.
On the opposite end of the temperature divide, the species living inside the core of Sol already have cold fusion and use it regularly. It's too bad your whole premise relies on evolution being real. There are studies out there that show that the time required for the human species to evolve doesn't equal the age of the Earth, in fact it outlives the age of the Earth thereby making evolution not possible. Making the proteins hot doesn't make them evolve faster; in fact they might just evaporate. http://evolution-facts.org/Ev-Crunch/c05.htm
Your mom has a cell plan where she is charged for incoming text messages if they aren't from someone on the same network? Considering it's your mom it may not be anything to worry about but otherwise I'd say that isn't a good plan. Who still charges for incoming text messages to begin with? That's almost as bad as charging for incoming phone calls.
1. Why do you presume it's Microsoft's responsibility for making drivers for your motherboard? They have generic drivers but it sounds like you wanted the manufacturer's drivers for your board. Do you actually think Gigabyte waits for MS to make a driver for a Gigabyte motherboard before Gigabyte can ship their boards? Gigabyte is responsible for making the drivers and I ran into the same problem you did: no drivers for Vista for my Gigabyte model. Luckily I was installing Vista in a VM and didn't need those drivers since VMWare presented Vista with everything it needed which leads me into your second complaint.
2. You say Vista is slow? Although I didn't test it that much (I played some of the built-in games and looked around the Control Panel) I can say for that much that it is fast and I was even in a VM. As a native OS I'm sure it would be even better and I'm running on an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ with a gigabyte of RAM (the VM had about 400 megs to work with though).
3. Unfortunately I can't comment on Aero because it was turned off due to Vista thinking my graphics card sucks. Although it does compared to most cards Vista thought it sucked more because VMWare only presented a basic graphics card to it. It was annoying though that Aero was turned off automatically and I didn't know how to turn it on (if that's even possible) so I could at least see it. Maybe that is why my experience wasn't too bad as far as Vista's speed since Aero was off, however compared to you that wouldn't be the difference since Aero was off for you too.
4. Can't comment on this one.
5. I never had issues and I was in and out of the Computer Mgmt snap-in and a handful of others, as well as playing the games (with no HW acceleration no less). The UAC was a bit annoying though since I couldn't turn it off but I wondered what its point was since to me it seemed like any user could just click Continue and get around it.
That's assuming you don't kill yourself first by DUI or if you even make it to prison considering the amount of time a case takes to make it through the court system. Not to mention the sentences that are handed out don't correlate with the crimes that much and a DUI could dictate only a few months incarceration although if you kill someone then you get more. All that is retroactive though; this system is proactive since they are trying to prevent you from drinking more before you even get into the DUI state. If you aren't one to go overboard then this shouldn't be an issue; if you are one to go overboard then you now have someone who will control your drinking since you aren't someone who can do it on your own. You could say those types of people need a little hand-holding like a little baby because they aren't mature enough to do it themselves.