You have an excellent point. The only time I buy anything in the stores is last years stuff that is being let go at cost. That coupled with the fact that I live absolutely out in the freakin middle of nowhere, I like to let UPS and FedX do my driving for me. That and I do not like contributing to the California Tax base since they just piss it away on dumb programs.
Round-trip times
Movies 1h30min
The Mall & Shopping 2h15min
Taco Bell 57min
It makes little sense that they're attacking online since mail-order has been around for forever and that was the only way to get alot of the minitures and games back in my day.
It's not illegal for a manufacturer to "set" the price or create restrictions in selling tecnique such as no online sale etc. That's all part of becoming an official "dealer". Car, boats sportinggood, fast food franchise, and scuba shops are good examples of this. It's legal as long as they set the price to all the dealers in a reagion and not just play favorites. It becomes illegal when they dump (sell below their cost) to drive a competitor out of business or multiple manufactures get together to fix the prices for the entire industry to gouge the customet.
The basic arguement for this is customer service. I'll use dive shops as I'm most familiar with those.
If you buy everything on line from the guy who is marking it up 5% then you'll be undercutting the store that marks it up 100%. The store closes since he can't keep up with the guy selling stuff out of his garage. The manufacturer looses out since a dealer is required to sell a product line where as the online guy is only going to sell the one or two hot items any one manufacturer makes. The customer also looses out since, like miniture gaming diving is a social activity. Store sponsor clubs and trips. They also conduct training which brings in fresh blood to the activity. There are also other services such as requipment repair, annual recertification, and tank fill that is not profitable but very necessary for divers. A shop will have these services while an online store will not. I can see the same rational the game company is using in order to keep their player base, support "game night" and tournaments, and have an experienced person for customers to talk to.
What I don't understand is why they don't do what many other manufacturer dealerships now require. If you want to sell online, you have to have a store front. The customer wins, the store wins, and the manufacturer wins.
Population of Japan as of 2003
128,469,000 people
Population of England as of 2001
50,526,000
I'll have to take a mulligan on Europe as they don't consider themselves one country quite yet and I'm too lazy to add up all the numbers.
A quote "Have you got a clue how many millions of people live in Japan? Or in Europe? The combined population of Europe has a lower murder and gun death rate than this entire country."
That all depends on what you consider "Europe" if you throw in the Eastern portion I highly doubt it.
I have a few numbers to help ease your alarm at our high murder rate, which is somewhere around 11-12 thousand people a year.
We kill nearly six times as many people with our cars "on accident". Imagine what we what we could do if it were on purpose.
Doctors kill nearly ten times as many people through malpractice every year.
Nearly thirty times that number kill themselves with smoking as are those murdered
Around 200-300 (I don't consider anyone over 16 to be a child) or so children where gunned down last year. An additional 50 or so were crushed to death by soda machines while rocking them, trying to get a free Coke.
Around 3,000 children drowned (many in a family or friends pool) and somewhere around 1,700 were killed while riding their bikes (traffic accidents)
Oh if that horrifies you. 879,000 children are abused. Of which 1200 die from said abuse, ussally by a family member or family friend.
So please tell me, why I or anyone else other than the stop the violence crowd, should even give the tiniest of shits over the 11,000 or so who were murdered with a firearm, a large portion of which were criminals killing other criminals. Especially when we kill or let die nearly 500,000 a year due to negligence and asinine behavior. Please tell me I'm dying to know!!
The rates for firearm deaths is the lowest it's been in fifteen years. We have plenty of other things to worry about and firearm related deaths are not very high on the list reguardless what the media hypes them up to be.
Well stupidity rears it's ugly head again. That's the only major problem with Slashdot. Even the biggest of jackasses has an opinion and is able to express it on topic he knows absolutely nothing about. The original poster has a legitiment question and isn't looking for the wellfare hand out like the one most of your family is using.
Personally I am in the same boat. It is possible to have no revenue hence no profit when you are first starting a business. The one thing I do have is debt and capital expenses. I have dropped nearly $3000 into my photography business, buying equipment, getting a website, and extra training. Before the year is up I'll most likely drop another $2000 on software and computer hardware upgrades. Can't keep using the stuff I "borrowed" from a friend.
Most of the work I've been doing has been for nothing more than the experience which is typically how small businesses go for the first year or two. If you break even in the first year you are doing really good. Someone who shows a big profit in the first year most likely doesn't have a long term viable concept. Usually they're riding a trend or a fad and will be out of buisness by year number two. Which brings us back to what the original guy wanted to know about and what the troll showed his ignorance of.
You can claim your start up expenses against your taxes. Office supplies, hardware, software, utilities, rent, and transportation costs. The catch is you cannot claim 100% on the first year's taxes. It must be divided up over the number of years of use. This is usually spread out over the first four years, but it depends on the equipment. A digital camera may be spread over just a couple of years, but a bulldozer may have to be claimed over ten years. After the initial start up, all the yearly costs can be deducted and only the higher dollar durable items having to be spread out over several years.
The flip side to this is you have to show a profit, I believe, by the third year or the IRS will consider you business a hobby and will no longer be able claim anymore deductions. Goto www.irs.gov. They have good information on the do's and don'ts of small business, but it'll take some digging to find. Hit Amazon.com and hunt around for small business books that have alot of good reviews from previous customers if you want something that is more geared to the layman.
Sure he is making a point. It's that it's not my fault waaaaa!! The.....made me do it. I find it funny that he likes to compare our murder rates to those of other countries countries that have the population size of let's say of Maine. Sure our per capita rates are still higher, but then again the US has a lower tollerance of bullshit than most who reside in Europe.
"The idea is that this sort of news, and in general, this type of government policy, constantly shows that violence and killing are acceptable solutions"
No duh!!! I find it amazing that people are still amazed about that. They think violence, especially gun violence is something new. These are the same people that also believe Doritoes were invented a year or two ago. Violence has been with us from the beginning. As much as Moore liked to make fun of rural towns that have lot's of firearms he failed to mention that they also have nearly absent crime rates. Of course that has more to do with family and attitudes towards personal responsibility than the firearms in themselves.
Yes violence and killing are acceptable solutions to many of the world problems. Yes violence and killing is a very cruel and very final solution, but if any of the give peace a chance crowd can come up with a solution that goes beyond "there's got to be a better way" and "killing is bad" then I would love to hear it. Not everyone turns out to be a peace loving, productive member of planet Earth and it requires something more than a "talkin to" to make them change their ways after they start causing problems. If anything we need to keep a running tally of the number criminals "murdered" vs innocents so we can better keep score. I personally see a criminal death not as a murder, but as an act of public service, and keeping with being fiscally responsible. (A one time fee of $.50 for a bullet, $25 for LA cops, vs $30k a year for 5-10 years)
Oh yeh, almost forgot, Michael Moore is a filthy hippy.
Actually in the past we have attacked/threatened Russia, AKA the Soviet Union, or were you not paying attention in history class. It was called the Cold War. Why would we attack them now they sold a few boxes, which we have blown up already, to the Iraq's they shouldn't have and we lodged a formal complaint with them. Sounds like diplomacy to me not plans for war.
Yes we did encourage and help Iraq attack Iran, remember this was the Cold War era we couldn't openly attack the USSR so we picked the opposite side. I do recall mentioning that in my last post. There is nothing hypocritical about cleaning up a mess that we had a hand in making.
In other worlds when you shit in your own bed, don't just lay in it crying. Don't sit there get up and clean up your mess, and that's exactly what what we're doing right now. Like it or not it's the right thing to do. Ignoring the problem and hoping the bad people will go away will only make things worse in the long run.
The tired arguments I was talking about were the ones on the news UN resolutions, 12 years of non-compliance yadayadayada. As far as the same tired arguments. What are the "brand new" reasons for going to war. Like it or not humans haven't changed much in ten thousand years, and the reasons for war haven't changed at all.
Yeh, we're pretty heartless bastards for protecting a people that have been for a couple a thousand years the whiping boys of nearly every coutry in Europe and the Middle East. What a bunch of meanies we are. Oh and those scheming dirty Jews, yeh there pretty bad too, they distabilized the whole region. Every time someone tried to go in and wipe them out they attacked them. Nothing more than a rouge state.
For those who love to idolize the Muslim world, don't forget slavery was one of their big business up into recent times. (Still is in some areas) That was a nice little institution they gave to the world. Not quite the English/US invention history revisionists would have everyone believe.
Germany beer commercials? Even before this happened I've never seen a German beer commerical. Which ones are any good, not that I'll ever find any of those around here. Most of the imported beers I've seen are nothing more than the crap from Europe, but since it's imported everyone gets excited.
"Freedom Fries" are just a reverse engineering scheme to get around French DRM methods and avoid payment of royalites for "French Fries".
Let's not sell a game which is purely entertainment because well might be bad, but let's do sell weapons materials to a rouge state because you know it won't affect us in any way and they promised to use them for only industrial purposes.
I don't know why you are all bashing Bush on the war, it was Al Gore who invented war after all.
I'm not going to argue on some of your response you since it's a dead horse that's already seen plenty of attention and most of the anti/pro-war arguments are played every five minutes on the news as sound bites. So let's move on.
Yes you are correct most of the protesters have done little to interfere with the war efforts other than to annoy, make public fools of themselves, politically or economically destroy themselves, and to galvanize those for the war.
Yes you are correct Iraq is not going to directly be a threat, as in directly attacking us, but unfortunately he has attacked his neighboors not once but twice and he does provide support for those who would and have attacked us and our allies. He will be a source of some dangerous things for those very same people. Especially with the dumb-ass French and their "let's keep selling dangerous technology to the Middle East" agenda and "That nuclear reactor we just sold them is for peacefull purposes...honest."
Of course on the flip side we are no less guilty than the silly Frogs. Our government has pulled some shady activities in the past and unfortunately we have supported dictators and terrorists alike (The enemy of my enemy and all that). We created this particular mess during the fight against the Soviets in the Cold War, so now we have to clean it up. More than anything else Iraq is a glaring example of unfinished business, which does need to be taken care of. It isn't just a question of is Saddam a bad bad man, which by the way he is, it's about being responsibility for past actions and doing something about it. The UN doesn't want to do anything about it. That might have something to do with letting countries with leaders that are as big or bigger pieces of human waste than Saddam into the organization and have a voice. Well if they don't want to take care of it, who then? France, more inspectors, or the Hollywood croud. Those probably are not going to be all that affective.
The world is a dangerous hostile place and has been since before the begining of recorded history. 1st world nations such as Europe, North America, and others are the exception rather than the rule for most of the world. To think these problems will just go away, will not affect us at home, or can be always be solved diplomatically is naive and ignorant of history.
What kind of strong proof do you need? Rows of body bags or how about a big sign visible from space that says chemical weapons located here? We could wait and see the smoking gun just like the French did after WW1. You can read the history books about their inaction (they were supposed to patrol the "no army zone" in the Rhienland) against a "contained and sanctioned" German. Can you remind me how that one turned out again? Something to do with 20 million+ people dying in a war that enveloped nearly every continent on the planet to be followed be forty year Cold War that saw another 100 million dead (Way to go France!! I'm guessing at the totals here since they're still finding mass graves in Russia, the Middle East, and Asia) A war which also happens to be the direct cause of nearly every conflict since then as well as all of our present problems. Who knows if Iraq's actions in the ninties would have sparked a new global war, but then again look at our past and present actions, unlike the French and our past selves at the time, we now refuse to have to pay as high of a price as we did then. We will not wait around long enough to see if this particular dictator's aspirations are anything like those of the past.
no you're not being unpatriotic, the news agencies are all crap. I don't know about them being propagandistic, but they are doing the media equivalent of rubber necking or sensationalizing everything. There is about two minutes worth of news in every hour they show. I dissagree with the gloss-gloss overs. If you remember back to the previous gulf war, there was absolutely no talk of friendly fire, casualties, or setbacks until way after the conflict. Now we practically know within a half a day when we've lost someone or injured one of our own.
The only protestors that are being unpatriotic or just simply stupid are the ones that are protesting Bush and the war, and when asked why, they say some dumbass comment like "No blood for oil" They obviously haven't been paying attention as to who is paying the blood(The US and Iraq people) and who is getting the oil (France, Russia, and China) My other favorite is "war is bad, there had got to be a better way!" Ok then what is the better way? Oh you don't know of one, then shut the hell up and get out of the way. Many of the protestors want to bitch and moan, but when it comes time do something about it they are at a lost as to what to do.
Protesting isn't upatriotic, but being ignorant of what freedom costs and doing things to interfere with those who are seeking to preserve it is.
If you want the most accurate reporting of the war, watch the history channel in about ten years. They tend to pull no punches when it comes to the events.
Until then I don't think it makes much difference who you watch, they're all equally annoying. I've been watching Fox, but after hearing "shock and awe" for the twentieth time in five minutes I almost wish a stray Iraqi missle would make it into the area and blow up all the reporters.
Why bother adding the hydrogen when what you need is more oxygen. It would take a lot of extra plumbing to make it work not to mention fairly large storage tanks. It wouldn't be worth the extra hassel of having to gas up with two fuels and the extra weight. You would see a greater return by adding a turbo, switching to an electric/gas hybrid or making the car out of lighter materials. If you're going to go through all the trouble you might as well burn straight hydrogen or better yet methane. Methane is much easier to come by, handle, and store.
Also carburetor's don't "decide" anything, they are adjusted and then operate according to that adjustment. Now on the other hand a fuel injection system, can adjust itself on the fly and compensate according to what it's sensors tell it, but it cannot magically force more air into the combustion chamber without outside help. Ram air scoups, blowers, or turbos help out, but all have their limitations. On top of that there is still the fact that air has only around 21% oxygen in it. Another popular strategy is the injection of Nitrous-oxide into the system which artificial increases the available oxygen. Only problem there is heat and nitrogen polutants issues. Theoretically I guess you could run 100% O2 using liquid oxygen to completely combust all available fuel, but I've never heard of anyone doing that before. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the metals that make up the engine itself tend to start to burn in a high temp 100% oxygen atmosphere. On the other hand if they could get that to work (make the parts out of ceramics) then you might see a big jump in fuel economy, and not to mention some crazy power.
Nothing will solve our petroleum dependency by itself. Hell hydrogen won't help, because guess where the cheapest place to get hydrogen from is, hmmm oil maybe. A large chunk of all that wonderful new research money is most likely targeted towards stripping hydrogen from oil.
The only reason I brought up biodiesel is it would be an excellent solution to break our dependency on imported oil. I say let the middleast choak on their oil.
As far as providing all our oil, yes it would most likely outstip our present farming capabilities, though I doubt it would take 96% of our land mass to do it. The author of the book I got the info from acknoledges the limitations. His take on it is biodiesel is fairly cheap to make, considering somewhere in the neighboor of 3 billion gallons of cooking oil and 300 million tons of animal fats (also a source for biodiesel) are dumped in the landfills every year. Quite a bit of useable energy in that, might as well make good use of it.
We use our Nextel cell phones for game chatting, since they usually have unlimited minutes on the weekends. Add a head set to it and you are good to go. The other nice thing with Nextels is the ability to do big conference calls. (more than three people) There is no lag and are very clear.
You can run hydrogen through an engine, but you'll run into the same obstical that the fuel cell vehicles have, hydrogen storage. It has to be compressed to 5000psi to get a reasonable amount on board. After that only thing you need is a regulator to control the flow from the tank. Mixing it with gasoline will do nothing for you since you just adding more fuel to an already incomplete combustion. You need more air to get more go out of your fuel.
If you want to see a similar system that is actually affordable and is already in use across the US, check out propane or methane conversions for cars. Those fuels are easier to store, but use similar equipment that a hydrogen conversion would require. Most propane/methan conversions are dual fuel, so you are able to use gasoline or the alternate fuel.
A very interesting alternate fuel is bio-diesel. Which is a simple process (lye+veg oil+methanol) that converts vegtable/animal fat oils into a diesel equivalent. The midwest of the US uses it as fuel additive. Content ranges from 20-100%. Burning it straight will not hurt a diesel engine. The nice thing is diesels get much better fuel economy are very powerfull, are inexpensive and readily available. If we "grow" our own fuel then the CO2 would be cycled instead of released. Farmers would benefit and "foreign oil" would be an issue of corn or soybeans instead crude. Something even the poorest country could produce. A "oil spill" wouldn't be as environmentally destructive and would bio-degrade in a matter of days. The funny thing is the guys that have been promoting use resturant oil so their vehicle exhaust smells like fries or onion rings.
I use the pinky for run/walking, prone, hot weapon key, and talk. I always have to use the toggel functions since I've never managed to be able to hold it down for any length of time.
I mis-spoke, I'm not condoning Eugenics, but simply a reduction of the number of jerks on this planet. All in all I don't mind the smart gun research and think some of the concepts are cool. I do think the reasons for doing them are way off base and overly optimistic. Firearm abuse has nothing to do with firearms, and everything to do with the parents and how they raise their children. Eugenics is not what I'm proposing and wouldn't work to solve firearm abuse anyway. The tendency for violence in learned in the home, not something you are born with. Basically I strongly feel that any person who is not responsible enough to own a firearm, which only requires a modest amount of personal restraint and discipline along with a properly developed concept of right and wrong, is definitely not responsible enough to have a child, which takes a far greater commitment to properly raise.
I'm not to worried about the government coming and taking my firearms. Since repressive gun regulations are unenforceable, and never work. Only those who are willing to voluntarily comply will turn in/register their firearms(Canada & California government officials still haven't figured that one out). New York had a ban on the books for years on handguns, it did absolutely nothing to change the problem. Now when they started locking criminals up with mandatory sentencing it had a huge impact on firearm abuse. All problems of the world have nothing to do with inanimate objects and everything to do with people. Attack the problem at its source instead of its symptom. There are more than enough people on this planet. I don't see a problem with keeping the dumb shits of this world from breeding in order to preserve the freedoms of those who don't cause the problems.
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You have an excellent point. The only time I buy anything in the stores is last years stuff that is being let go at cost. That coupled with the fact that I live absolutely out in the freakin middle of nowhere, I like to let UPS and FedX do my driving for me. That and I do not like contributing to the California Tax base since they just piss it away on dumb programs. Round-trip times Movies 1h30min The Mall & Shopping 2h15min Taco Bell 57min It makes little sense that they're attacking online since mail-order has been around for forever and that was the only way to get alot of the minitures and games back in my day.
Actually he would be perfect for the job. Imagine a slime ball that knows all the tricks. Fight fire with fire and all that..
The basic arguement for this is customer service. I'll use dive shops as I'm most familiar with those.
If you buy everything on line from the guy who is marking it up 5% then you'll be undercutting the store that marks it up 100%. The store closes since he can't keep up with the guy selling stuff out of his garage. The manufacturer looses out since a dealer is required to sell a product line where as the online guy is only going to sell the one or two hot items any one manufacturer makes. The customer also looses out since, like miniture gaming diving is a social activity. Store sponsor clubs and trips. They also conduct training which brings in fresh blood to the activity. There are also other services such as requipment repair, annual recertification, and tank fill that is not profitable but very necessary for divers. A shop will have these services while an online store will not. I can see the same rational the game company is using in order to keep their player base, support "game night" and tournaments, and have an experienced person for customers to talk to.
What I don't understand is why they don't do what many other manufacturer dealerships now require. If you want to sell online, you have to have a store front. The customer wins, the store wins, and the manufacturer wins.
I haven't burned a CDR for music in a year. It's all either hard drive or CF chips.
128,469,000 people
Population of England as of 2001
50,526,000
I'll have to take a mulligan on Europe as they don't consider themselves one country quite yet and I'm too lazy to add up all the numbers.
A quote
"Have you got a clue how many millions of people live in Japan? Or in Europe? The combined population of Europe has a lower murder and gun death rate than this entire country."
That all depends on what you consider "Europe" if you throw in the Eastern portion I highly doubt it.
I have a few numbers to help ease your alarm at our high murder rate, which is somewhere around 11-12 thousand people a year.
We kill nearly six times as many people with our cars "on accident". Imagine what we what we could do if it were on purpose.
Doctors kill nearly ten times as many people through malpractice every year.
Nearly thirty times that number kill themselves with smoking as are those murdered
Around 200-300 (I don't consider anyone over 16 to be a child) or so children where gunned down last year. An additional 50 or so were crushed to death by soda machines while rocking them, trying to get a free Coke.
Around 3,000 children drowned (many in a family or friends pool) and somewhere around 1,700 were killed while riding their bikes (traffic accidents)
Oh if that horrifies you. 879,000 children are abused. Of which 1200 die from said abuse, ussally by a family member or family friend.
So please tell me, why I or anyone else other than the stop the violence crowd, should even give the tiniest of shits over the 11,000 or so who were murdered with a firearm, a large portion of which were criminals killing other criminals. Especially when we kill or let die nearly 500,000 a year due to negligence and asinine behavior. Please tell me I'm dying to know!!
The rates for firearm deaths is the lowest it's been in fifteen years. We have plenty of other things to worry about and firearm related deaths are not very high on the list reguardless what the media hypes them up to be.
My religion doesn't think so. Only in self defense.
Glad to know that your religion does your thinking for you. You must be very proud of yourself
Personally I am in the same boat. It is possible to have no revenue hence no profit when you are first starting a business. The one thing I do have is debt and capital expenses. I have dropped nearly $3000 into my photography business, buying equipment, getting a website, and extra training. Before the year is up I'll most likely drop another $2000 on software and computer hardware upgrades. Can't keep using the stuff I "borrowed" from a friend.
Most of the work I've been doing has been for nothing more than the experience which is typically how small businesses go for the first year or two. If you break even in the first year you are doing really good. Someone who shows a big profit in the first year most likely doesn't have a long term viable concept. Usually they're riding a trend or a fad and will be out of buisness by year number two. Which brings us back to what the original guy wanted to know about and what the troll showed his ignorance of.
You can claim your start up expenses against your taxes. Office supplies, hardware, software, utilities, rent, and transportation costs. The catch is you cannot claim 100% on the first year's taxes. It must be divided up over the number of years of use. This is usually spread out over the first four years, but it depends on the equipment. A digital camera may be spread over just a couple of years, but a bulldozer may have to be claimed over ten years. After the initial start up, all the yearly costs can be deducted and only the higher dollar durable items having to be spread out over several years.
The flip side to this is you have to show a profit, I believe, by the third year or the IRS will consider you business a hobby and will no longer be able claim anymore deductions. Goto www.irs.gov. They have good information on the do's and don'ts of small business, but it'll take some digging to find. Hit Amazon.com and hunt around for small business books that have alot of good reviews from previous customers if you want something that is more geared to the layman.
"The idea is that this sort of news, and in general, this type of government policy, constantly shows that violence and killing are acceptable solutions"
No duh!!! I find it amazing that people are still amazed about that. They think violence, especially gun violence is something new. These are the same people that also believe Doritoes were invented a year or two ago. Violence has been with us from the beginning. As much as Moore liked to make fun of rural towns that have lot's of firearms he failed to mention that they also have nearly absent crime rates. Of course that has more to do with family and attitudes towards personal responsibility than the firearms in themselves.
Yes violence and killing are acceptable solutions to many of the world problems. Yes violence and killing is a very cruel and very final solution, but if any of the give peace a chance crowd can come up with a solution that goes beyond "there's got to be a better way" and "killing is bad" then I would love to hear it. Not everyone turns out to be a peace loving, productive member of planet Earth and it requires something more than a "talkin to" to make them change their ways after they start causing problems. If anything we need to keep a running tally of the number criminals "murdered" vs innocents so we can better keep score. I personally see a criminal death not as a murder, but as an act of public service, and keeping with being fiscally responsible. (A one time fee of $.50 for a bullet, $25 for LA cops, vs $30k a year for 5-10 years)
Oh yeh, almost forgot, Michael Moore is a filthy hippy.
P3-800, that isn't a computer, that's about the right processor speed for a video card though.
They invented it and spread it accross Europe, Africa, and Asia. All we did was buy the North American franchise rights to it.
Yes we did encourage and help Iraq attack Iran, remember this was the Cold War era we couldn't openly attack the USSR so we picked the opposite side. I do recall mentioning that in my last post. There is nothing hypocritical about cleaning up a mess that we had a hand in making.
In other worlds when you shit in your own bed, don't just lay in it crying. Don't sit there get up and clean up your mess, and that's exactly what what we're doing right now. Like it or not it's the right thing to do. Ignoring the problem and hoping the bad people will go away will only make things worse in the long run.
The tired arguments I was talking about were the ones on the news UN resolutions, 12 years of non-compliance yadayadayada. As far as the same tired arguments. What are the "brand new" reasons for going to war. Like it or not humans haven't changed much in ten thousand years, and the reasons for war haven't changed at all.
For those who love to idolize the Muslim world, don't forget slavery was one of their big business up into recent times. (Still is in some areas) That was a nice little institution they gave to the world. Not quite the English/US invention history revisionists would have everyone believe.
"Freedom Fries" are just a reverse engineering scheme to get around French DRM methods and avoid payment of royalites for "French Fries".
I don't know why you are all bashing Bush on the war, it was Al Gore who invented war after all.
Someone from Mexico trying to start something in Spanish, that's even more pathetic than someone from Canada talking out their ass in French.
Forgive us we live in California. We haven't quite figured out what this irony thing is even though it's everywhere you look in this state.
Yes you are correct most of the protesters have done little to interfere with the war efforts other than to annoy, make public fools of themselves, politically or economically destroy themselves, and to galvanize those for the war.
Yes you are correct Iraq is not going to directly be a threat, as in directly attacking us, but unfortunately he has attacked his neighboors not once but twice and he does provide support for those who would and have attacked us and our allies. He will be a source of some dangerous things for those very same people. Especially with the dumb-ass French and their "let's keep selling dangerous technology to the Middle East" agenda and "That nuclear reactor we just sold them is for peacefull purposes...honest."
Of course on the flip side we are no less guilty than the silly Frogs. Our government has pulled some shady activities in the past and unfortunately we have supported dictators and terrorists alike (The enemy of my enemy and all that). We created this particular mess during the fight against the Soviets in the Cold War, so now we have to clean it up. More than anything else Iraq is a glaring example of unfinished business, which does need to be taken care of. It isn't just a question of is Saddam a bad bad man, which by the way he is, it's about being responsibility for past actions and doing something about it. The UN doesn't want to do anything about it. That might have something to do with letting countries with leaders that are as big or bigger pieces of human waste than Saddam into the organization and have a voice. Well if they don't want to take care of it, who then? France, more inspectors, or the Hollywood croud. Those probably are not going to be all that affective.
The world is a dangerous hostile place and has been since before the begining of recorded history. 1st world nations such as Europe, North America, and others are the exception rather than the rule for most of the world. To think these problems will just go away, will not affect us at home, or can be always be solved diplomatically is naive and ignorant of history.
What kind of strong proof do you need? Rows of body bags or how about a big sign visible from space that says chemical weapons located here? We could wait and see the smoking gun just like the French did after WW1. You can read the history books about their inaction (they were supposed to patrol the "no army zone" in the Rhienland) against a "contained and sanctioned" German. Can you remind me how that one turned out again? Something to do with 20 million+ people dying in a war that enveloped nearly every continent on the planet to be followed be forty year Cold War that saw another 100 million dead (Way to go France!! I'm guessing at the totals here since they're still finding mass graves in Russia, the Middle East, and Asia) A war which also happens to be the direct cause of nearly every conflict since then as well as all of our present problems. Who knows if Iraq's actions in the ninties would have sparked a new global war, but then again look at our past and present actions, unlike the French and our past selves at the time, we now refuse to have to pay as high of a price as we did then. We will not wait around long enough to see if this particular dictator's aspirations are anything like those of the past.
Protesting isn't upatriotic, but being ignorant of what freedom costs and doing things to interfere with those who are seeking to preserve it is.
Until then I don't think it makes much difference who you watch, they're all equally annoying. I've been watching Fox, but after hearing "shock and awe" for the twentieth time in five minutes I almost wish a stray Iraqi missle would make it into the area and blow up all the reporters.
Also carburetor's don't "decide" anything, they are adjusted and then operate according to that adjustment. Now on the other hand a fuel injection system, can adjust itself on the fly and compensate according to what it's sensors tell it, but it cannot magically force more air into the combustion chamber without outside help. Ram air scoups, blowers, or turbos help out, but all have their limitations. On top of that there is still the fact that air has only around 21% oxygen in it. Another popular strategy is the injection of Nitrous-oxide into the system which artificial increases the available oxygen. Only problem there is heat and nitrogen polutants issues. Theoretically I guess you could run 100% O2 using liquid oxygen to completely combust all available fuel, but I've never heard of anyone doing that before. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the metals that make up the engine itself tend to start to burn in a high temp 100% oxygen atmosphere. On the other hand if they could get that to work (make the parts out of ceramics) then you might see a big jump in fuel economy, and not to mention some crazy power.
The only reason I brought up biodiesel is it would be an excellent solution to break our dependency on imported oil. I say let the middleast choak on their oil.
As far as providing all our oil, yes it would most likely outstip our present farming capabilities, though I doubt it would take 96% of our land mass to do it. The author of the book I got the info from acknoledges the limitations. His take on it is biodiesel is fairly cheap to make, considering somewhere in the neighboor of 3 billion gallons of cooking oil and 300 million tons of animal fats (also a source for biodiesel) are dumped in the landfills every year. Quite a bit of useable energy in that, might as well make good use of it.
We use our Nextel cell phones for game chatting, since they usually have unlimited minutes on the weekends. Add a head set to it and you are good to go. The other nice thing with Nextels is the ability to do big conference calls. (more than three people) There is no lag and are very clear.
If you want to see a similar system that is actually affordable and is already in use across the US, check out propane or methane conversions for cars. Those fuels are easier to store, but use similar equipment that a hydrogen conversion would require. Most propane/methan conversions are dual fuel, so you are able to use gasoline or the alternate fuel.
A very interesting alternate fuel is bio-diesel. Which is a simple process (lye+veg oil+methanol) that converts vegtable/animal fat oils into a diesel equivalent. The midwest of the US uses it as fuel additive. Content ranges from 20-100%. Burning it straight will not hurt a diesel engine. The nice thing is diesels get much better fuel economy are very powerfull, are inexpensive and readily available. If we "grow" our own fuel then the CO2 would be cycled instead of released. Farmers would benefit and "foreign oil" would be an issue of corn or soybeans instead crude. Something even the poorest country could produce. A "oil spill" wouldn't be as environmentally destructive and would bio-degrade in a matter of days. The funny thing is the guys that have been promoting use resturant oil so their vehicle exhaust smells like fries or onion rings.
I use the pinky for run/walking, prone, hot weapon key, and talk. I always have to use the toggel functions since I've never managed to be able to hold it down for any length of time.
I'm not to worried about the government coming and taking my firearms. Since repressive gun regulations are unenforceable, and never work. Only those who are willing to voluntarily comply will turn in/register their firearms(Canada & California government officials still haven't figured that one out). New York had a ban on the books for years on handguns, it did absolutely nothing to change the problem. Now when they started locking criminals up with mandatory sentencing it had a huge impact on firearm abuse. All problems of the world have nothing to do with inanimate objects and everything to do with people. Attack the problem at its source instead of its symptom. There are more than enough people on this planet. I don't see a problem with keeping the dumb shits of this world from breeding in order to preserve the freedoms of those who don't cause the problems.