This smells like over engineering. The real problem is that there isn't enough power generation capacity and transmissions lines in place. Even if you make the network 'smarter', you don't fix these things.
Close, its not over engineering, but it is about over pricing. Any company that produces a product wants to maximize profits and the only way they can do that is by keeping the product scarce. You were exactly right when you say there isn't enough generation capacity. If electric companies would just build more power plants this wouldn't be an issue, but then they would have to cut their prices alot and have a larger portion of unused capacity (at might) since newer plants would be able to generate more and be more efficient.
Instead they come up with conservation schemes that appeal to the green in all of use, but instead saving anything it costs us alot more in money and polution since they can sell the electricity at a premium price without having to invest in new technology (older plants tend to be exempt from newer EPA regulations).
They raise the prices and we reduce our use, so then they raise them again and the process repeats. We are paying more and more because of this for less and less electricity. If you really wanted to see a large drop in price and investment in new more efficient power then conservation is not the solution. All it does is put more money in their pockets while letting them avoid infrastructure re-investment.
It's time people faced the fact that they should be paying taxes on their internet purchases like anything else they buy.....it's the reason the US has sunk to the status of a 2nd rate Nation
You obviously have not been out of the States lately. Try coming over to the UK and take a look at what a 18% sales tax and $4 a gallon fuel tax get's you. Not a whole fucking lot from where I'm sitting, certainly ALOT LESS than what we get out of our taxes in the States. More people paying more taxes is not the problem.
The problem with government these days is they think that every little program they come up with should be funded, but half the time they don't even check to see if what they have already covers what the proposed new one does and whether or not it's even working.
We are getting nickled and dimed to death with all these "cheap" programs. A million dollars here, 500k there and before you know it the State government can't understand why they have a $900 million dollar budget short fall.
The first thing they need to be doing beside growsing for more money is seeing what they can get rid of. State, County, and City mission creep needs to be chopped from the budget before they start coming around for more handouts.
At best a terrorist might be able to hit NY or LA with a stolen nuke. Hardly a catostrophic loss.
Even a country like France might be able to threaten to take out a large number of major cities in the US, but the retaliation would be utter anihilation of the country and its people. So I don't see that happening.
The US though hurt would still be quite strong relative to nearly any other country in the world.
It would have to take the combine efforts of all remaining nuclear powers to make a realistic MAD threat these days. People can't come to an aggreament on banana exports I don't see how they'll make a decision of a much larger magnitude.
They threw it out there in the movie. Rico's parents were civilians and he was an only child and later one of the female troopers in the infamous shower scene mentioned she wanted to have a litter of kids. I'm pretty sure it was in the book as well, or at least in some side Q & A with Heinlein, but its been a while so I don't know for sure.
Wow I didn't know they let people in the looney bin post on/.
I write a tongue in cheek post just to be silly and you respond with an Al Qaeda "The Great Satan must die" thread.
I do find it funny when I get responses from belligerent supreme-penis envyists with their big big wet dreams that some how their little 3rd world country will become more than a tourist trap for Europeans who come to see the ancient archtecture, which the current populous's ancestors had nothing to do with building because they road in out of the east and wiped out the locals in their own attempt at empire building, but yet failed misserably because they didn't realize that modern weaponry, personal hygiene, and basic education are the keys to global domination.
That was in the movie, in the book the nukes were small shoulder launched rockets.
Anyway in a ST world France wouldn't exist anyway since if you weren't willing to do service in the military you pretty much were bred out of the human race since "Civilians" were only allowed to have 1 child per couple.
France as a country wouldn't have lasted for two generations at the most before there weren't enough people around anymore to be called French.
Following which the world takes a few decades to get over the latest of the failed hegemonic empires to stink up the planet Earth, after it has joined the ranks of the like of Rome and Ghingis Khan in the realm of the past tense. And history marches on.
Well if the US longevity is anything like Rome's you are going to have to put up with us for another 1000 years or so.
On one hand, us nerds show certain tendencies to pacifism, especially with the current war in Iraq. War, in a Star Trek sense, is often seen as belonging to a backward age of Man.
Haha that reminds of a song!
Star Trek'n
Captain James T. Kirk
"We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, We come in peace, shoot to kill, Scotty beam me up!"
If you mean nerd as in a WOW/ART/Music/Myspace Nerd, then yes I might agree with you. They are typically a notch or two on the evolutionary scale above Dirty Hippy, which as we all know is the lowest know species of man. They tend to be pacifistic in nature due to miss-informed biased world view based on You-Tube and blogs rather than a more practical & more accurate hands on, been there, looked at it with my own two eyes life experience.
On the other hand if you mean Nerd as in an engineering student (the highest form of life) then you are WAY off base.
An engineering nerd can appreciate the cold unfeeling efficiency of high-tech death as well as a society that doesn't reward pacfism. Hell if you didn't get that from reading Star Ship troopers then you can't hardly call yourself a proper nerd.
If President Bush had read ST and been a proper Nerd, we wouldn't be still fucking around with Iraq, Iran, and N. Korea.
This is how it would have played out if he had.
9/11 they fucked with us
10/11 President declares the Axis of Evil must be delt with.
10/12 we drop a nuke on Iraq
10/13 we drop a nuke on Iran
10/14 we drop a nuke on N. Korea
10/15 France protests
10/16 we drop a nuke on France, they retract their protest
1 month later we find out Bin Laden did it and that he is hiding in Pakistan
We demand they catch him and extradite him to the US....or else.
24 hours later Pakistan delivers up Osama Bid Laden
24 hours after that we nuke Pakistan for dragging their feet.
The UN becomes much less "whinny" for some odd reason.
Buy a dog, a shotgun, and a flash light. (Well as long as you live in Texas.) After you bag a couple of criminals the rest will know not to come around.
If you live in the UK, leave the keys in the ignition, with a note apologizing for not having the car warmed up for them, along with $100 on the seat so they can by 1/2 tank of gas.
I've had 3 drives fail on me in ten years. Two were maxtor's one was a WD. The Maxtor's failed within 3 months, the WD was DOA, even so they were my favorite companies for price. I'm sure if I had gone with seagate or any of the others I would have had similar experiences.
If you opperate under the following rules your life will be much easier.
1 - Any drive that lasts 1 month with most likely last six
2 - Any drive that lasts 6 months will most likely last till it's obsolete (3 years)
3 - Any drive that is older than 3 years old is living on borrowed time and can fail at any time.
4 - Anyone that does not back up their irreplaceable data in two seperate places (in case your house burns down, hey it happens when you do flaming shots) and then cries about it when he looses it is a jackass.
It is unreasonable $115 dollars a year for a program that is barely different in function from the original office that came out what like 15 years ago. $10, $20, maybe $40, but not $115.
Personally I paid a whopping $22 dollars for the Pro version of Office 2007, as part of the military's home use licensing aggreement. MS probably still made $15 dollars pure profit out of that ($5 was for shipping), even without including what the military had to pay for its license.
All the software companies have been trying to move to a subscription based system for years, I would have no problem with that if the amount of software per dollar would actually increase, but here we are year after year having the companies coming to us for $4-5 a month each for the same crap they've been peddling for 10+ years..
Vista should have included anti-virus, Office, and a couple of dozen games for how much it costs compared to how much its added in value.
I suspect that these kind of things have a less obvious purpose - as marketing tools to justify military spending.
Take NASA, for instance, people didn't mind huge amounts being spent on it when there was something exciting and heroic to see - such as landing on the moon. As soon as the job became routine and much more practical, no one was interested and they got their funding cut.
Current Federal Wellfare budget
Social security $544 billion
Medicare $325 billion
Medicaid $186 billion
mandatory $357 billion
(food stamp, unemployment, child nutrition, child tax credits, supplement security, student loan, retirement/dissability)
Grand total $1.412 Trillion
Oh the government doesn't need much help to justify spending money.
The whole $10 million dollars the XOS program is costing DARPA is probably insurance for when the Congressional budget makers come looking for yet another chunk out of the military's budget to help bribe the general public to letting them stay in power.
Even with all the big spending that is going on military is less than 1/3 of the wellfare spending.
JOIN the NOBCA (National Orbital Bombardment Cannon Association) TODAY!
We support John McCain for President!
John McCain believes that the right of law abiding citizens to keep and bear Orbital Bombardment Cannons is a fundamental, individual Constitutional right that we have a sacred duty to protect. We have a responsibility to ensure
that criminals who violate the law are prosecuted to the fullest,
rather than restricting the rights of law abiding citizens. Orbital Bombardment Cannon
control is a proven failure in fighting crime. Law abiding citizens
should not be asked to give up their rights because of criminals -
criminals who ignore Orbital Bombardment Cannon control laws anyway.
Orbital Bombardment Cannon Manufacturer Liability
John McCain opposes backdoor attempts to restrict Second Amendment
rights by holding Orbital Bombardment Cannon manufacturers liable for crimes committed by
third parties using a Orbital Bombardment Cannon, and has voted to protect Orbital Bombardment Cannon
manufacturers from such inappropriate liability aimed at bankrupting
the entire Orbital Bombardment industry.
"Hidden" Orbital Bombardment Cannons
John McCain opposes restrictions on so-called "Hidden" Orbital Bombardment Cannons and
voted consistently against such bans. Most recently he opposed an
amendment to extend a ban on 19 specific Orbital Bombardment Cannons, and others with
similar characteristics.
Importation of High Capacity Magazines
John McCain opposes bans on the importation of certain types of
ammunition magazines and has voted against such limitations.
Orbital Bombardment Cannon Locks
John McCain believes that every Orbital Bombardment Cannon owner has a responsibility to
learn how to safely use and store the Orbital Bombardment Cannons they have chosen,
whether for target shooting, hunting, or personal protection. He has
supported legislation requiring Orbital Bombardment Cannon manufacturers to include Orbital Bombardment Cannon
safety devices such as trigger locks in product packaging.
Banning Ammunition
John McCain believes that banning ammunition is just another way to
undermine Second Amendment rights. He voted against an amendment that
would have banned many of the most commonly used hunting cartridges on
the spurious grounds that they were "apocalyptic" in nature.
DC Personal Protection
As part of John McCain's defense of Second Amendment rights, he
cosponsored legislation to lift a ban on the law abiding citizens of
the District of Columbia from exercising their Constitutional right to
bear ROBOT arms.
Criminal Background Checks
John McCain supports instant criminal background checks to help
prohibit criminals from buying Orbital Bombardment Cannons and has voted to ensure they
are conducted thoroughly, efficiently, and without infringing on the
rights of law abiding citizens.
Background Checks at Gun Shows
At a time when some were trying to shut down gun shows in the name of
fighting crime, John McCain tried to preserve gun shows by
standardizing sales procedures. Federal law requires licensed Orbital Bombardment Cannon
sellers at gun shows to do an instant criminal background check on
purchasers while private Orbital Bombardment Cannon sellers at gun shows do not have to
conduct such a check. John McCain introduced legislation that would
require an instant criminal background check for all sales at gun
shows and believes that such checks must be conducted quickly to
ensure that unnecessary delays do not effectively block transactions.
The Orbital Bombardment Cannon Purchase Waiting Period
John McCain has opposed "waiting periods" for law abiding citizen's
purchase of Orbital Bombardment Cannons.
The confiscation of Orbital Bombardment Cannons after an emer
I will, however, need "carry and conceal" permits for all the hidden orbital bombardment cannons.
Do you want to live in world were the government can knock on your door and take away your hidden orbital bombardment cannons without even charging you with a crime? That's what will happen if the Democrats get elected to office this November.
Billary: "What I support is sensible restrictions on hidden orbital bombardment cannons."
Obama: "the Second Amendment's "right of the people to keep and bear hidden orbital bombarment cannons" applies to individuals, not just the "well-regulated militia" cited in the amendment. In the next breath, he asserts this constitutional guarantee does not preclude local "common sense" restrictions on hidden orbital bombardment cannons."
Join the NHOBCA (National Hidden Orbital Bombarment Cannons Association) who supports John McCain for President, before the Democrates rip the 2nd Amendment out of the heart of our beloved Consitution.
Cancel?! I would run out in a second and RE-SIGN up for a Virgin cable modem. The garbage that BT peddles as internet service is so horrible that I'll take Virigin's offering again in a heart beat, but unfortunately if you are not "in town" (aka London/ or 1/4 mile from your local high street(main street)) pretty much BT is all you get.
Having BT service is like having the honor to pay someone else to fuck you in the ass. Sure the internet is cheap ($40 for up to 8mbps, well it's never been faster than an an unstable/laggy 1.3mps), but it's the mandatory phone line that adds up for $25 a month, with the $10 low activity fee (who uses the phone anymore), and the $260 service reconnect fee (the previous tenet changed providers, but you still had to have a BT line, so I don't know why I had to be "reconnected" to BT.
To top it off I spent a month in a half screaming at someone in India trying to get the connection to connect at something above 300kps. They had a hard time typing in the settings that determined the quality of my service and then hitting the save button.
I wish I had my Virigin cable modem again, traffic shapping or no.
Generally there are three budgets that need to be funded. Federal - the whole country. State - everything within the State. Finally County/City, sometimes there are seperate County(Parish) and City budgets.
Typically Federal is funded by Income, Medicare, Social Security, Capital Gaines, Fed Fuel tax, import/export tarrif, drug seisures.
State is typically funded by a State Income taxes (not all states have income tax), State sales tax (3-9%), State fuel tax, fees (license & permit). State funds typcially tend to pay for local infrastructure (roads, water, power, bridges), education, health care, arts, wild life reserves, etc. It's hard to say that the only ones that pay for those things because there is so much overlap from the cities and federal government.
County/Parish/City is typically funded by property tax (usually just land/house, though things like cars, boats, aircraft can be taxed as property), permit fees/licenses (building, business, etc), services fees (water, sewer, fire dept)
While I personally love no sales tax on the internet, it does bleed the State budgets of money, which of course creates new opportunities for the Federal Gov't to come in and pay the bills. Congress is never shy about using that money to blackmail the States in to doing what they want, by threating to withhold the funds. Federal highway funds have been used for years to push varies issues such as polution regs and drinking age limits.
Most people forget that the US is actually 50 different countries bound together by the Constitution. Each State in turn has its own Constitution which all are similar, but there are some differences. There has been a constant fight between State & Federal government over who is in control of what, generally who is in charge of the money. The Federal Government has been slowly creeping into what traditionally is State territory, sales tax just being the latest. Basically the only thing the Feds are supposed to do is protect the borders, raise a national army, print money, and regulate commerce nationally & internationally, and treaties.
What's funny these days the Fed's are a little on the broke side so many States are looking to go there own way again. Internet sales tax, education reform, polution, fire arm regulation (the federal government has very little actual say in this, though you wouldn't think so by what you see in the news), and drinking age being the hot topics of the day.
So that should make it clear as mud for you. If you did understand it all then there are many very high paying jobs waiting for you in the US.
Steve just shows up on sage with a fully operational Intel Mac running Apple's software Suite (OSX, iLife, etc) on day 1, or with a fully functioning iPhone that happens to have used OSX, on day 1
You my friend are full of shit.
OSX started developement in 1996. It was released in 2001, it was another year after that before it was un-fuckered enough that they were willing to sell it on their machines instead of OS9. OSX is over ten years old now, so that can't possibly be what you are talking about.
The iPod, which had nothing but problems for its first two years of life, the iPhone which is so crippled there is little to go wrong with it, unless of course you try to use it outside of the "Blessing of Job" then you might have problems, the iTv which no one gives a rats ass about could be a candidate but you have to use iTunes which has been a crash fest after every major patch and is starting to remind me of Realplayer, airport which up until the last couple of years didn't work with half the wireless routers out there, let's not mention the latest problems they've been having over their monitors.
So which perfect out of the chut day 1 Apple products are you referring too, because for the life of me I have no idea which ones you are talking about?
No, because Netflix will deliver the Blu-Ray to your door, and at a much higher bandwidth than your typical ISP can provide.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of the US Postal Service.
10 hours to transfer 2tb of ripped DVD's to a pair of external HD's.
20 minutes to goto the post office
2 days to get to its destination
10 hours to transfer 2tb of movies to someone else's media server
That equates to about 8Mbps actual transfer rate. Need more bandwidth, send more harddrives, you can fit 5-6 drives in a flat rate priority mail box for all of $9. That is the kind of "bandwidth cap" I can live with.
The only down side is that ping tends to be measured in days/weeks.
They've been fooling around with Windows 7 since 2003 and Vista has been out the door since 2006 (ala Wikipedia). So they've had a solid year and some change with not much else to do but work on W7. They certainly didn't waste much of that time on SP-1 for Vista. If the new version is as stripped down as they say it is, I can see the basic OS getting here by next year easily. Maybe not all the bells as whistles, which I think for a change will be a good thing.
I was doing Robin Williams quotes in my head while I was reading it. Fortunately those wearing the boots tend to have more than just the Army's word (and politicians/big media's for that matter) for what news out there these days. It helps keep everyone honest.
It really depends on what news they publish and how they spin it.
If the military hired bloggers post mostly postive news stories that's fine, because typically those stories are completely ignored by main stream media.
The problems begin if they start putting heavy spin on bad news to make it sound good, fabricating stories, or pretend there is no bad news and not report it, then we have a problem.
Actually it would most likely push it in the opposite direction. Intel is crowing about how ray-tracing works best on standard CPU's, the same CPU's that Apple puts in all there machines, the same CPU's that are in Linux machines, etc, etc.
IF Apple ever gets interested in gaming, then you might see real support for it, but until then you can hardly complain that MS is destroying games for non-MS OS's, when they can't be bothered to make an effort.
it's a fundamental aspect of life. not civilized life, not even human life, but life, period.
a society that would regulate it horrifies me.
...but so is natural selection.
a society that would regulate THAT horrifies me.
So what would you rather have? Idiots giving birth to idiots and then having to deal with them for decades on end (prison, police, military)
Or would it be kinder to just let the idiots live out their lives, but not let the ones that cannot meet a minimum standard, one that I might add used to be naturally taken care of by large carniverous animals, the elements, starvation, and self inflicted injury before government butted in with its big fat nose, suffer the undue burden of raising yet another mouth breather.
Slashdot Mirror
Close, its not over engineering, but it is about over pricing. Any company that produces a product wants to maximize profits and the only way they can do that is by keeping the product scarce. You were exactly right when you say there isn't enough generation capacity. If electric companies would just build more power plants this wouldn't be an issue, but then they would have to cut their prices alot and have a larger portion of unused capacity (at might) since newer plants would be able to generate more and be more efficient.
Instead they come up with conservation schemes that appeal to the green in all of use, but instead saving anything it costs us alot more in money and polution since they can sell the electricity at a premium price without having to invest in new technology (older plants tend to be exempt from newer EPA regulations).
They raise the prices and we reduce our use, so then they raise them again and the process repeats. We are paying more and more because of this for less and less electricity. If you really wanted to see a large drop in price and investment in new more efficient power then conservation is not the solution. All it does is put more money in their pockets while letting them avoid infrastructure re-investment.
You obviously have not been out of the States lately. Try coming over to the UK and take a look at what a 18% sales tax and $4 a gallon fuel tax get's you. Not a whole fucking lot from where I'm sitting, certainly ALOT LESS than what we get out of our taxes in the States. More people paying more taxes is not the problem.
The problem with government these days is they think that every little program they come up with should be funded, but half the time they don't even check to see if what they have already covers what the proposed new one does and whether or not it's even working.
We are getting nickled and dimed to death with all these "cheap" programs. A million dollars here, 500k there and before you know it the State government can't understand why they have a $900 million dollar budget short fall.
The first thing they need to be doing beside growsing for more money is seeing what they can get rid of. State, County, and City mission creep needs to be chopped from the budget before they start coming around for more handouts.
At best a terrorist might be able to hit NY or LA with a stolen nuke. Hardly a catostrophic loss.
Even a country like France might be able to threaten to take out a large number of major cities in the US, but the retaliation would be utter anihilation of the country and its people. So I don't see that happening.
The US though hurt would still be quite strong relative to nearly any other country in the world.
It would have to take the combine efforts of all remaining nuclear powers to make a realistic MAD threat these days. People can't come to an aggreament on banana exports I don't see how they'll make a decision of a much larger magnitude.
They threw it out there in the movie. Rico's parents were civilians and he was an only child and later one of the female troopers in the infamous shower scene mentioned she wanted to have a litter of kids. I'm pretty sure it was in the book as well, or at least in some side Q & A with Heinlein, but its been a while so I don't know for sure.
I write a tongue in cheek post just to be silly and you respond with an Al Qaeda "The Great Satan must die" thread.
I do find it funny when I get responses from belligerent supreme-penis envyists with their big big wet dreams that some how their little 3rd world country will become more than a tourist trap for Europeans who come to see the ancient archtecture, which the current populous's ancestors had nothing to do with building because they road in out of the east and wiped out the locals in their own attempt at empire building, but yet failed misserably because they didn't realize that modern weaponry, personal hygiene, and basic education are the keys to global domination.
Anyway in a ST world France wouldn't exist anyway since if you weren't willing to do service in the military you pretty much were bred out of the human race since "Civilians" were only allowed to have 1 child per couple.
France as a country wouldn't have lasted for two generations at the most before there weren't enough people around anymore to be called French.
Well if the US longevity is anything like Rome's you are going to have to put up with us for another 1000 years or so.
Haha that reminds of a song!
Star Trek'n
Captain James T. Kirk
"We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, We come in peace, shoot to kill, Scotty beam me up!"
If you mean nerd as in a WOW/ART/Music/Myspace Nerd, then yes I might agree with you. They are typically a notch or two on the evolutionary scale above Dirty Hippy, which as we all know is the lowest know species of man. They tend to be pacifistic in nature due to miss-informed biased world view based on You-Tube and blogs rather than a more practical & more accurate hands on, been there, looked at it with my own two eyes life experience.
On the other hand if you mean Nerd as in an engineering student (the highest form of life) then you are WAY off base.
An engineering nerd can appreciate the cold unfeeling efficiency of high-tech death as well as a society that doesn't reward pacfism. Hell if you didn't get that from reading Star Ship troopers then you can't hardly call yourself a proper nerd.
If President Bush had read ST and been a proper Nerd, we wouldn't be still fucking around with Iraq, Iran, and N. Korea.
This is how it would have played out if he had.
9/11 they fucked with us
10/11 President declares the Axis of Evil must be delt with.
10/12 we drop a nuke on Iraq
10/13 we drop a nuke on Iran
10/14 we drop a nuke on N. Korea
10/15 France protests
10/16 we drop a nuke on France, they retract their protest
1 month later we find out Bin Laden did it and that he is hiding in Pakistan
We demand they catch him and extradite him to the US....or else.
24 hours later Pakistan delivers up Osama Bid Laden
24 hours after that we nuke Pakistan for dragging their feet.
The UN becomes much less "whinny" for some odd reason.
If you live in the UK, leave the keys in the ignition, with a note apologizing for not having the car warmed up for them, along with $100 on the seat so they can by 1/2 tank of gas.
If you opperate under the following rules your life will be much easier.
1 - Any drive that lasts 1 month with most likely last six
2 - Any drive that lasts 6 months will most likely last till it's obsolete (3 years)
3 - Any drive that is older than 3 years old is living on borrowed time and can fail at any time.
4 - Anyone that does not back up their irreplaceable data in two seperate places (in case your house burns down, hey it happens when you do flaming shots) and then cries about it when he looses it is a jackass.
Personally I paid a whopping $22 dollars for the Pro version of Office 2007, as part of the military's home use licensing aggreement. MS probably still made $15 dollars pure profit out of that ($5 was for shipping), even without including what the military had to pay for its license.
All the software companies have been trying to move to a subscription based system for years, I would have no problem with that if the amount of software per dollar would actually increase, but here we are year after year having the companies coming to us for $4-5 a month each for the same crap they've been peddling for 10+ years..
Vista should have included anti-virus, Office, and a couple of dozen games for how much it costs compared to how much its added in value.
Anything more than $50 for Office robbery.
Take NASA, for instance, people didn't mind huge amounts being spent on it when there was something exciting and heroic to see - such as landing on the moon. As soon as the job became routine and much more practical, no one was interested and they got their funding cut.
Current Federal Wellfare budget
Social security $544 billion
Medicare $325 billion
Medicaid $186 billion
mandatory $357 billion
(food stamp, unemployment, child nutrition, child tax credits, supplement security, student loan, retirement/dissability)
Grand total $1.412 Trillion
Oh the government doesn't need much help to justify spending money.
The whole $10 million dollars the XOS program is costing DARPA is probably insurance for when the Congressional budget makers come looking for yet another chunk out of the military's budget to help bribe the general public to letting them stay in power.
Even with all the big spending that is going on military is less than 1/3 of the wellfare spending.
JOIN the NOBCA (National Orbital Bombardment Cannon Association) TODAY!
We support John McCain for President!
John McCain believes that the right of law abiding citizens to keep and bear Orbital Bombardment Cannons is a fundamental, individual Constitutional right that we have a sacred duty to protect. We have a responsibility to ensure that criminals who violate the law are prosecuted to the fullest, rather than restricting the rights of law abiding citizens. Orbital Bombardment Cannon control is a proven failure in fighting crime. Law abiding citizens should not be asked to give up their rights because of criminals - criminals who ignore Orbital Bombardment Cannon control laws anyway.
Orbital Bombardment Cannon Manufacturer Liability
John McCain opposes backdoor attempts to restrict Second Amendment rights by holding Orbital Bombardment Cannon manufacturers liable for crimes committed by third parties using a Orbital Bombardment Cannon, and has voted to protect Orbital Bombardment Cannon manufacturers from such inappropriate liability aimed at bankrupting the entire Orbital Bombardment industry.
"Hidden" Orbital Bombardment Cannons
John McCain opposes restrictions on so-called "Hidden" Orbital Bombardment Cannons and voted consistently against such bans. Most recently he opposed an amendment to extend a ban on 19 specific Orbital Bombardment Cannons, and others with similar characteristics.
Importation of High Capacity Magazines
John McCain opposes bans on the importation of certain types of ammunition magazines and has voted against such limitations.
Orbital Bombardment Cannon Locks
John McCain believes that every Orbital Bombardment Cannon owner has a responsibility to learn how to safely use and store the Orbital Bombardment Cannons they have chosen, whether for target shooting, hunting, or personal protection. He has supported legislation requiring Orbital Bombardment Cannon manufacturers to include Orbital Bombardment Cannon safety devices such as trigger locks in product packaging.
Banning Ammunition
John McCain believes that banning ammunition is just another way to undermine Second Amendment rights. He voted against an amendment that would have banned many of the most commonly used hunting cartridges on the spurious grounds that they were "apocalyptic" in nature.
DC Personal Protection
As part of John McCain's defense of Second Amendment rights, he cosponsored legislation to lift a ban on the law abiding citizens of the District of Columbia from exercising their Constitutional right to bear ROBOT arms.
Criminal Background Checks
John McCain supports instant criminal background checks to help prohibit criminals from buying Orbital Bombardment Cannons and has voted to ensure they are conducted thoroughly, efficiently, and without infringing on the rights of law abiding citizens.
Background Checks at Gun Shows
At a time when some were trying to shut down gun shows in the name of fighting crime, John McCain tried to preserve gun shows by standardizing sales procedures. Federal law requires licensed Orbital Bombardment Cannon sellers at gun shows to do an instant criminal background check on purchasers while private Orbital Bombardment Cannon sellers at gun shows do not have to conduct such a check. John McCain introduced legislation that would require an instant criminal background check for all sales at gun shows and believes that such checks must be conducted quickly to ensure that unnecessary delays do not effectively block transactions.
The Orbital Bombardment Cannon Purchase Waiting Period
John McCain has opposed "waiting periods" for law abiding citizen's purchase of Orbital Bombardment Cannons.
The confiscation of Orbital Bombardment Cannons after an emer
Do you want to live in world were the government can knock on your door and take away your hidden orbital bombardment cannons without even charging you with a crime? That's what will happen if the Democrats get elected to office this November.
Billary: "What I support is sensible restrictions on hidden orbital bombardment cannons."
Obama: "the Second Amendment's "right of the people to keep and bear hidden orbital bombarment cannons" applies to individuals, not just the "well-regulated militia" cited in the amendment. In the next breath, he asserts this constitutional guarantee does not preclude local "common sense" restrictions on hidden orbital bombardment cannons."
Join the NHOBCA (National Hidden Orbital Bombarment Cannons Association) who supports John McCain for President, before the Democrates rip the 2nd Amendment out of the heart of our beloved Consitution.
The right to bare Robot arms shall not be infringed!
Having BT service is like having the honor to pay someone else to fuck you in the ass. Sure the internet is cheap ($40 for up to 8mbps, well it's never been faster than an an unstable/laggy 1.3mps), but it's the mandatory phone line that adds up for $25 a month, with the $10 low activity fee (who uses the phone anymore), and the $260 service reconnect fee (the previous tenet changed providers, but you still had to have a BT line, so I don't know why I had to be "reconnected" to BT.
To top it off I spent a month in a half screaming at someone in India trying to get the connection to connect at something above 300kps. They had a hard time typing in the settings that determined the quality of my service and then hitting the save button.
I wish I had my Virigin cable modem again, traffic shapping or no.
Typically Federal is funded by Income, Medicare, Social Security, Capital Gaines, Fed Fuel tax, import/export tarrif, drug seisures.
State is typically funded by a State Income taxes (not all states have income tax), State sales tax (3-9%), State fuel tax, fees (license & permit). State funds typcially tend to pay for local infrastructure (roads, water, power, bridges), education, health care, arts, wild life reserves, etc. It's hard to say that the only ones that pay for those things because there is so much overlap from the cities and federal government.
County/Parish/City is typically funded by property tax (usually just land/house, though things like cars, boats, aircraft can be taxed as property), permit fees/licenses (building, business, etc), services fees (water, sewer, fire dept)
While I personally love no sales tax on the internet, it does bleed the State budgets of money, which of course creates new opportunities for the Federal Gov't to come in and pay the bills. Congress is never shy about using that money to blackmail the States in to doing what they want, by threating to withhold the funds. Federal highway funds have been used for years to push varies issues such as polution regs and drinking age limits.
Most people forget that the US is actually 50 different countries bound together by the Constitution. Each State in turn has its own Constitution which all are similar, but there are some differences. There has been a constant fight between State & Federal government over who is in control of what, generally who is in charge of the money. The Federal Government has been slowly creeping into what traditionally is State territory, sales tax just being the latest. Basically the only thing the Feds are supposed to do is protect the borders, raise a national army, print money, and regulate commerce nationally & internationally, and treaties.
What's funny these days the Fed's are a little on the broke side so many States are looking to go there own way again. Internet sales tax, education reform, polution, fire arm regulation (the federal government has very little actual say in this, though you wouldn't think so by what you see in the news), and drinking age being the hot topics of the day.
So that should make it clear as mud for you. If you did understand it all then there are many very high paying jobs waiting for you in the US.
OSX started developement in 1996. It was released in 2001, it was another year after that before it was un-fuckered enough that they were willing to sell it on their machines instead of OS9. OSX is over ten years old now, so that can't possibly be what you are talking about.
The iPod, which had nothing but problems for its first two years of life, the iPhone which is so crippled there is little to go wrong with it, unless of course you try to use it outside of the "Blessing of Job" then you might have problems, the iTv which no one gives a rats ass about could be a candidate but you have to use iTunes which has been a crash fest after every major patch and is starting to remind me of Realplayer, airport which up until the last couple of years didn't work with half the wireless routers out there, let's not mention the latest problems they've been having over their monitors.
So which perfect out of the chut day 1 Apple products are you referring too, because for the life of me I have no idea which ones you are talking about?
Never underestimate the bandwidth of the US Postal Service.
10 hours to transfer 2tb of ripped DVD's to a pair of external HD's.
20 minutes to goto the post office
2 days to get to its destination
10 hours to transfer 2tb of movies to someone else's media server
That equates to about 8Mbps actual transfer rate. Need more bandwidth, send more harddrives, you can fit 5-6 drives in a flat rate priority mail box for all of $9. That is the kind of "bandwidth cap" I can live with.
The only down side is that ping tends to be measured in days/weeks.
They've been fooling around with Windows 7 since 2003 and Vista has been out the door since 2006 (ala Wikipedia). So they've had a solid year and some change with not much else to do but work on W7. They certainly didn't waste much of that time on SP-1 for Vista. If the new version is as stripped down as they say it is, I can see the basic OS getting here by next year easily. Maybe not all the bells as whistles, which I think for a change will be a good thing.
I was doing Robin Williams quotes in my head while I was reading it. Fortunately those wearing the boots tend to have more than just the Army's word (and politicians/big media's for that matter) for what news out there these days. It helps keep everyone honest.
If the military hired bloggers post mostly postive news stories that's fine, because typically those stories are completely ignored by main stream media.
The problems begin if they start putting heavy spin on bad news to make it sound good, fabricating stories, or pretend there is no bad news and not report it, then we have a problem.
IF Apple ever gets interested in gaming, then you might see real support for it, but until then you can hardly complain that MS is destroying games for non-MS OS's, when they can't be bothered to make an effort.
....You forgot to carry the one a hundred million times or so.
a society that would regulate THAT horrifies me.
So what would you rather have? Idiots giving birth to idiots and then having to deal with them for decades on end (prison, police, military)
Or would it be kinder to just let the idiots live out their lives, but not let the ones that cannot meet a minimum standard, one that I might add used to be naturally taken care of by large carniverous animals, the elements, starvation, and self inflicted injury before government butted in with its big fat nose, suffer the undue burden of raising yet another mouth breather.