I think the public perception of incompetence is just a crude smokescreen for malevolence. I have zero faith that what you are seeing now geopolitically from the US is being done to benefit the US middle class, the older traditional backbone of the US economy. On the contrary, everything we are seeing appears to only benefit a few international conglomerates.
The R&D now and into the future come from the same places it does now. 1/2 goes to uuniversities who get lucrative government grants and contracts, the other half go to private business contractors, with your usual secrecy, classified projects, and yada yada yada. It is changing slowly and going more international, either by putting the money outside the borders, or by similar to what they are doing now, importing the brains.
As to what technology is out there now, who REALLY believes "they" don't have a successor to the sr71 up and flying? Personally, I think they are probably 3 generations beyond sr71 technology.
And I agree,and not even in 50 years, try 10 to 15 years, I think the US will lose it's "public" top dog status, and I also think it's being done on purpose,completely on purpose, for a host of reasons,because it is part of an overall lofty heights connected elite globalism effort to make the planet a two class technofuedalistic big brother society. They also want to severely reduce the worlds population levels. I think it's fairly obvious, BTW, that this is happening. Governments by and large are increasingly irrelevent, they get *told* what to do, the rest is just soap opera for the peoples. That's a pretty involved subject and beyond some single post sized discussion, and a side issue, but it's my opinion on the subject.
According to this DOE fact sheet article, until recently they were flaring off almost all the natural gas, yet local villages had little electricity. I think I see the problem here. Looks like government payola, ripping off the people, various ill will, begats violence, more bad vibes, back and forth.
Just perhaps if they hadn't been ripped off for a long time maybe the people there wouldn't be so poor. Flaring off the gas for years instead of putting in generators to use the gas seems a scosh lame to me. I imagine this fact was not lost on the locals either. Who would be blamed then, the oil producers, the government doofus who gave them the contract? I have no idea, but right there you can see just one instance on how they got shafted.
I also just read a few pretty current news articles when I was looking for that reference link. Your typical back and forth warfare,massacres, people tapping into pipelines to get fuel, oil spills and fires and explosions then, etc. Chaos and anarchy mixed with huge international money and corruption and fascism. I have no idea how to help those people there, tribalism and warfare and serious government/oil industry corruption look like the major problems. I think perhaps if they just scrap the oil contracts and renotiate and require some actual infrastructure be put in instead of just arranging more cash to whatever local warlord du juor happens to be there with his hands out might work better. The actual hardware for electricity and normal communications, make the oil companies put it in. I would bet in one day some millionaire trader sitting in an office far away from nigeria, making a bundle off the nigerian oil, swapping oil futures commodites around could pay for this localised internet deal and then some, a lot of "then some". It's this whole system that causes the problems, so it's the whole system that needs to change. There's no excuse for a nation that wealthy to have such poor people and lack of the basics.
... the same I have had for a few years now. I think the government is trying to gradually remove the civilian space program, turn that over to private sources at an almost "hobby" level, and concentrate on pure classified military useages of space. They can claim "streamlined government" and "grand opportunities for the private sector" and so on, then go back to space being the military's job, which has always been the real #1 reason to even have a "space" program, ie, it's the high ground, who rules there wins.. It also can have a blacker budget even beyond what they have now. In adition, we've gotten to the point that international "cooperation" has gotten seriously into the giving away the family jewels level, it is no longer prudent to do so.
IMO anyway
Private space launches will continue,like now, and the normal commercial satellites etc, but that is old hat tech now. I am guessing even the best of them will be at the grade B level of technology, grade A will be held closer by the mil complex guys, and that will be the stealthing of "man in space" to the public. they might blather on about some mars mission in 10-20 years, in the meantime I bet they will be doing a lot more manned missions using more exotic craft than what they let on to.
--that is pretty accurate, I'll accept it for the most part. I have a scosh more nationalism and states-rights in me though, but it's close enough. For example, I don't see a little saner protectionism policy to be all that bad, as well as restricting immigration to only the legals. I am aware that a more global economy is here and coming more, I think we should mitigate it's effects on the US middle class more, ie, giving tax breaks to corps to offshore is kinda ill advised, and not insisiting on quid quo pro tariffs at the border is just plain nuts. Stuff like that.
Wish I had kept mine I wrote back in junior high, this was just before the beatles by a couple of years IIRC, where I predicted the collapse of the social security system. what a hoot. I think I still type just as bad, too;)
... of the R party is what we used to call the eastern establishment rockefeller liberal wing of the party, back in the 60's and 70's. There was a huge power struggle then, and the traditionalists, who included a lot of the classical non interventionists and business ethics-matter types, lost, bigtime. That eastern establishment wing (your basic military - industrial complex-banking establishment sorts, now roughly classed as the globalists) took over in the 64 election, then re-concentrated their power when they forced bush 1 onto the ticket with reagan. The current occupiers in DC have little, I mean VERY little, in common with the traditionalists, although I will admit they have a lot of misguided fundies sucked into supporting them, based on "endtimes" prophecy and being israel-firsters, but that's actually a low number and they don't have as much influence as they think they do, but the R party will keep their votes anyway, just "because" they can.
At the top, the strings are pulled (speaking of both the D and R party now) by a few large banks and conglomerates, same as it always has been, and the various subgroupings/constituenceies are still being preached to in the exact words they want to hear, to keep up this generational-long congame.
Same old- same old stuff, just this eras version of "ohhh-new shiny so it MUST be improved.." tacked on top.
I'm personally so disgusted with the R party I don't even call myself conservative any more, they even ruined that word, turned it into something bad and noxious, when it used to just stand for honest, decency, small and efficient government, and more basic freedoms. Now I don't know what the heck it stands for other than it's "patriotic" to become a looter nation, and that lying is a commendable lifestyle choice.
As to the word "liberal", that was abused even further, what passes for a defintion now as liberal has nothing to do with a classical liberal from the olden daza. It certainly never meant just wholesale wealth transference to pick up votes, like it means now.
I consider myself now just a traditional Constitutionalist,an independent, with a strict interpretation based on the english words and defintions that were used at the time of the writing of the Constitution. For a very common example, the state of Vermont has the only true implementation of the second amendment, IMO. The federal government sure doesn't, that's for sure.
I would say there's handful left of high ranking pols in both parties who are actual patriots and constitutionalists, but they are a severe minority. Most of the rest are all various flavors of garden variety crooks, IMO.
The good news is, we have developed a huge number of people who have gotten over voting for criminal gang A or B,or have stopped voting entirely, which means there exists a base of *potential* voters and activists who could conceivably take back government from the gangs who run it-some time anyway. It would take quite the grassroots effort to be sure. And there's also a growing number of what are called disaffected voters who used to classify themselves as R or D but are now neutral and looking harder at reality. This is good, and the net sure helps to break the programming and brainwashing that has gone on for years.
It always pays to remember oil when ever discussing ajny geopolitics. China is much more dependent now on oil/energy supplies than it is on a consumer market backed by pieces of paper that the US market represents to them. They have been smart. If you look at what they have been doing with the dollars exported to them for consumer goods, they have been turning around, taking the same exact dollars, and investing in machine tools, etc, the stuff that builds wealth, all the way to entire factories, plus sucking in western investment money to build even larger manufacturing infrastructure. The major US car companies have all announced recently investments in manufacturing plants there-and not for the export market back to the US, but for their domestic market. And that's just one example of many. Increasingly, the US market is losing importance to them, it won't be needed (soon enough) now that they have a large enough middle class to be "consumers' themselves. It's also one of the primary reasons the federal reserve note has been dropping in world wide trading circles-it's no longer necessary for the rest of the world to trade with the buck being the "reserve" currency. It only came about as the reserve currency from the "petrodollar" phenomenon, combined with the fact we USED to be the planets big dog on exporting manufactured goods.
As to china not hating us, this contradicts their military posture, which regards the US first and foremost as their number one enemy and whom they would be at war with in the future. "Hate" per se has not much to do with it realistically, it's just practicality for them. They NEED the oil, we NEED the oil, the EU NEEDS the oil and the explosively growing (pun intended) islamic "world" NEEDS the oil, but there's only enough for ONE of those planetary subgroups left if you look at the next 1-3 decades and whatpasses for proven reserves. And I am even leaving out India, south america and africa and japan, so you can see it's even worse. A few nations left can be self sufficient, nations like canada in particular, russia, brazil, etc, but most nations are completely dependent on cheap oil, and cheap oil is going away soon. and when you are as large as china, well, you can see the potentialities there.
Right now, the US economy is hanging on by a slim thread that is unraveling, precisely because we gave away our diverse manufacturing advantages we had. We gained that edge when we mostly traded our own products within the 50 states and also produced a lot of our own oil at an extremely cheap cost, both in terms of money and in terms of BTUS needed to get more BTUs. Once that started to slip, in the late 60's, we switched even more to foreign sources of oil, but world wide demand was not as great then either, so we were able to continue. That is not the case now, not even close. And china in particular has a projected demand that is amazing, it is going to be shortly higher than our own, and because we don't supply that much oil, and because they have got about all the machine tools and factories and cheap R&D they need from us already,the era of extremely cheap chinese goods to the US will start to slow down as china will be providing those goods to the places that have the worlds *true* reserve currency, which is bulk oil, and that ain't us. In short, we will pretty soon (a matter of some years to perhaps just one more decade) not really have anything china wants or needs, and our dollars will be worth much less to them. It's taken 3 decades on chinas part and our own globalist traders part to transfer all the wealth producing facilities from here to there, but it's about "done" now, so I expect the economic ramifications to be getting exponentially worse, with the resulting political ramificiations to be even MORE worse.
I've brought up the same exact points I can't say how many times on forums and in meatspace, trying to show people how they have been brainwashed. You get met with incredulity, or they claim you are lying or something. I am not amazed any longer at most peoples outright ignorance, and how fast you can move a large population towards extreme jingoism and genocidal thoughts. The worlds master manipulators can play on any sub group they target, whether a nation or religious group or socio/economic/political sub group or "party" like a tuned violin using nothing more than gradeschool indoctrination and control over the most prevalent form locally of the mass media. It takes quite a bit of smarts, integrity and hard work just to get to all the sides of an issue, and even more to come to a contrarian position. Speaking any actual DATA is enough to get you labeled as an "extremist" in a lot of cases. It's in all nations and cultures, too, you can see it, and the worlds bankers/militarist profiteers have been laughing about it for centuries now, because it's a congame that just keeps on working for them.
--I've dropped coin on computers before, new and still expensive used, just so happens this is my favorite one of the dozen or so scattered around the room right now, although at best any of them are pentium 2s, 333's, 400s, etc. It is not the fastest clock speed, but it is the most *reliable* one of the bunch and I have had it the longest and it's just comfortable. Can't explain it any better than that-comfortable. I don't know why either, but it is. I have some dells, compaqs and various flavors of whiteboxes. My last brandy new one-a mac- though took a direct lightning hit on the line right outside, and was damaged severely, even through the surge protector. It still ran kinda sorta but I scrapped it. I really liked that machine. Since then I dropped almost a grand on a used laptop, then decided that was ridiculous to keep doing that every year or two, decided to wait a few years before getting another, so I have.
I'm just going on a real rough rule of thumb in pricing, laptops were/are always around double the price of desktops for some *rough* similar numbers. To me, that means laptop prices are not dropping as fast as desktops, probably because they have a corporate mindset different criteria of shooting for the lightest weight and thinnest cross section, etc. That's a guess though. I keep reading bitch after bitch about laptop battery life, when the solution is still therte, just put up with a weight that was normal a few years ago, and pout in bigger battery or batteries, but no one is doing that. increase electrical demand, drop battery size, pray that modern battery tech works enough people won't return the machines after using them one day. I think that's nuts, but it's not my call there. I don't know what happened to people they lost strength or something, an extra 1 or 2 lbs seems to be so important people will pay an extra 500$ or something for that.. I'm a blue collar worker, so I guess that's why I don't understand it, that seems so trivially light to me, I'd much rather have a big large amp hour decent battery, and I think most users and corporate types aren't laborers, so to them that is too heavy or something. I'm not trolling or anything,or putting anyone down, just guessing as to the market demand. the mindset that goes to that market demand is totally alien to me, I admit that. I just never understood being afraid of any slight physical exertion,like carrying a laptop that is 2 lbs heavier here and there between airconditioned office and car and coffeeshop,but then paying money to go to some workout club is all. To me it's silly, but to each their own, I certainly do some silly stuff, ow what would appear totally silly to some urbanite, that's for sure. Same with cell phones now, almost all the new ones I see are useless, i don't like them, because they are TOO small, I can't see the screens or use what passes for a keyboard. It's called geezer eyes. And back to urban/rural silliness, heh, yep, just thinking about it. I can poke fun at meselfs too./me goes over to compost pile for visual and olfactory inspection, to see if it's cooked enough to use in the garden. heh heh heh. Stuff like that. Not to mention what goes INTO said alleged compost pile. Joe office worker with the 2.3 lb laptop would be going WTF? and EWWWWW!
%^)
I still think there's a good market for a real low watt/low power needed but "good enough" set of specs with a cheap laptop, especially if they weren't as concerned with the weight and put beefy batteries in the thing to get run times up where they should be, ie, at least a full working day-8 hrs, plus a smidgen. I don't know how hard that would be to pull off, but I bet it would be MUCHO easier if they weren't as concerned with lightness and "looks" and thiness.
Like I said, there's a ton of high end powerful and expensive options, but a dearth of NEW low end options that are good enough and cheap enough at the laptop market. I no longer see any reason for having computers be obsolete every year, and like I said, I don't "game",
thankyou for the clarification of the urban legend. A quick google check showed a lot of sites still reporting the sheffield as being made of aluminum(which was merely my recollection of the reported events back then), but enough with cred, like your link, prove otherwise, so I stand corrected with this material science refresher. Thank you. They did switch back to all or mostly all steel though for new ship design,from various problems with aluminum (mostly it is not that great for armor), some mention in the article in the following link.
... the displays. They should be replaceable easy and be sorta standard. But isn't that lcd price full retail? If it was gotten by the manufacturere and sold as part of the laptop system, seems like it could be cheaper, overall. All I know is, whomever comes up with an upgradeable laptop, something that isn't obsolete junk in two years AND can be fixed/repaired/upgraded, around my price range, and preferably running linux from an OEM install so everything "just works", will be getting my business. and I bet they'll sell a lot of them, too, make it on volume.
I know what I want doesn't exist yet, so I'll just hold out then. I have enough for now. Same thing I did with computers in general, I had to hold out until there were used ones that were affordable for me on the market.
cell phones now, something that works perfectly fine =30$ or wifi AP = 70$ PDAs of various flavors,or music/media machines 2-300$, these are just small computers now, realistically LCD screens as mentioned=200$
Now that is all retail, seems like they could be combined and get *close* to 500$. I know it's not there yet, but still, it's sniffin distance now, if some company wants to head thataway
Well, even so, it's still would be better than what I am using now, a PP200. I know all sorts of people still using older systems because they paid a lot of money for them and they still work well enough. So, you are right on what is top end now or midrange, but the centaur guys observations that his chips are good enough for 90% of what most people use a computer for are most likely still valid. Here on slashdot you have a much higher ratio of people who have brand new or pretty new systems than you do in the "general" population, and uber geeks tend to hang out more with other uber geeks, so perhaps they don't see it as much. I know most corporate bosses make so much money and live such a different lifestyle it's hard for them to relate to joe working stiff, that's why you see so many weird business changes-marketing and the bosses can't relate to most people, they lose track of anything outside their little niche worlds of much better off financially people than any sort of median-norm. I know there's no company out there that I have seen is offering any sort of new laptop that even possibly could be in my price range, so I hang on to the older ones, and I bought them used. Same with my desktops.
There's different niches out there, and there's a huge niche where "cheap and good enough" is still king, and it was refreshing to see an article on slashdot where that is covered, usually it's some new thing that is the fastest/best and most expensive, and most energy hog as well, and seeing as how I am into alternative energy, I always look at that angle. I don't want an electrical sub station needed to power me and my house and stuff, I think that is beyoind ridiculous and getting into the generational greedy range. that's ME, others can think different, but it is how I think...
This guy at centaur gets it on where his market is, and I'm exactly the sort of person he is thinking of, that's why I wondered if any company had an upgradeable cheap laptop based on his cpu/mobo stuff yet. Like my desktop, when I get ready I'll put a new board and CPU in it, but for now, this is "good enough" for me, just never seen a laptop I can do the same thing with, and I want low power, good battery life, and upgradeable by switching a few cables and slapping in a new board for cheap a few years hence.
Just a-wondering is all, no biggee. If I really wanted or needed a liquid cooled monster like we see all the time here, I guess I would get one, but it would be overkill for my needs, and definetly suck way too much juice and throw too much heat. don't need it really, like I said, don't do games or modeling or whatever. Folks who do got tons of choices, folks who don't got almost squat for choices it appears, and I despise the forced upgrade business solutions we keep seeing.. There's plenty of choices out there in that expensive/faster/ mo powah direction, but very few choices the other way.
People HAVE been "up in arms" over this invasive technology for years and years, and you know what happens? People said it was "tin foil hat, it'll never happen" etc. I say that because it hasd happened to me, over and over again. Step by step by step, all the bad crap that was predicted (by myself and thousands of other people clanging the alarm bells) has been proven TRUE, despite being called "luddites" or "paranoid". I had so called intellectually hip total morons as late as two years ago SWEAR that RFID tags would never be readable past a few inches maximum, or that they wouldn't be put in everything, or the tech was not good enough to be used for data mining of tracking, or that the thought that cameras everywhere would never happen, etc. I distinctly remember being told I was SO wrong and yada yada. check out drudge right now, big article about new cams going up in baltimorte 24/7, all over, because "we are at war now". Phooie. Cameras everywhere, chips in everything, the government and so called "law" being totally yanked away from the average person, the news a globalist propoganda and brainwashing arm more than anything else.. perpetual war for perpetual profits. Big brother loves you, and etc. We have always been at war with eastasia and.... more lies.
Double phooie, it's happening, and really,really fast now.
This stuff is EASY to predict, it IS the implementation of a complete and total big brother slave society. And that is a carefully picked word, "slaves". That's it in a nutshell, taken as an aggregate. The good news is FINALLY more than a few people are sounding the alarm, but man, it's been rough to deal with it.
NOW, RFID tags in "stuff" is coming, it's here now, no one stopped it, because it was new and shiny and and geeky and "the war on...." whatever various scams and shams, and it is ALSO coming in the form of forced embedded RFID tags in your person. It is GOING to happen, because people will not say no to it, they will wait until it's too late. They are doing it to the military first, the order followers by choice, then cops, then everyone else so that the enforers, the globalists muscle, can say "WE got the chip, now shuttup and take yours, or else".
Or else. "Or else" that's the "stick" part. Now all you got to be is accused, that's it, some brainwashed bozo just declares you a non person, an "untermenschen" and you are 100% screwed. That's here NOW and it's "legal".
This is so freakin easy to see coming. And it was easier when they started with the gun control crap, they have to disarm their victim populations first.
I got no easy answers to it. I know I was warning people decades ago, telling them then to just say no, to pay attention to what is going on, to STOP supporting the criminal gangs that hijacked the nation years ago, to stop cooperating with them and to exert a smidgen of ethics and moral control and common sense when they did business.
Nope, football and video games and various other bread and circuses "entertainments" and staying half drunk or stoned all the time seem to be more important to most people. We have MORE people now aware and active in resisting, but it's still a small percentage, but we DO have the net, so that's a good thing. Maybe it will be mitigated, I still don't think so, not when the goons manipulate the money and can make anyone a criminal by merely writing new laws.
At best I can say I will resist forced chipping, and try to avoid as many products as I can with tracking/data accumulating chips in them, using any means necessary, and I recommend the same to anyone else, that and refusing to work for "the man" if I can use the old phrase here.
We had a better one in the 60's, "you are part of the problem, or part of the solution", basically, there are *no neutrals*.
we have the cheap desktops now, like the walmart 200 buck boxes, but does anyone make a *new* laptop that uses this guys chips and a via mobo, and is it under 500 clams brand new? what he says is true, and I'm in that 90% range that what passes for a mid range speed is MORE than enough for my purposes. I don't do gaming or weather modeling, etc. That's the breakthrough and the sweetspot general pricing range I am waiting for, the linux laptop,comes complete and works outta-the-box, including wireless, under 500$, and *upgradeable*. Is this possible now? Say it is, I mean, 3-4 years from now I could replace the whole mobo with whatever is cool then, along those lines, yet alone just swapping in a new cpu, etc. And a REAL battery (or batteries even better, in some sort of standardized arrangement, with 12 volt DC input being standard) in it, I'll tote a couple extra lbs, I don't need a laptop to weigh sub-3 lbs, 6-7 is still quite acceptable, it's the same as the ones I have now. His chip at 7 watts sounds great, and 1 ghz is perfectly acceptable. Heck, even if it had a switch to toggle it back and forth between 3 watts and 7 watts would be nice, as in clocked/not clocked.
Desktops are a different story, you can always swap around parts and do a little drilling and cutting, etc to make anything fit, but laptops are teh sucks for upgrading and working on, more or less, and they are too expensive as they are sold now to change out very often (for me I mean, but bet a lot of other folks feel the same way). I'd get one and use it for my main desktop most of the time then with an external keyboard and my regular mouse and monitor, scrap energy hog desktops, but retain the option of true portability.
but I bumped mine to 228 ram to run linux (FC2 now) with gnome. I started with just 32 megs(that sure didn't work with any useable GUI), and as I added some sticks it just got much better. Although I just may try out some of the other recommended winow managers though and strip my system down, as additional RAM for this machine is antique expensive, Just adding another stick of 128 and trying to find the other matching processor and voltage regulator immediately bumps cost into a brand new bare bones system range, so I haven't done it. Shame, too, because it's such a reliable machine, An ibm 365 12u made in 96 with the dual processor board, just an off the wall one, doesn't seem to match any of the other dual PP boards that I have looked at to try and scrounge the dual processor parts.
Ships made out of aluminum are hugely vulnerable to damage from a relatively cheap cruise missile, as proved in the falklands (was that the sheffield? One of you brits or argentines help me out here).
carbon fiber, although lighter and etc etc with the article, will not be able to take much damage at all before it is ineffective, it just won't. I know the *idea* is to be stealthy so you don't take damage, but as soon as you release one shot of anything, your position is out there.
Navies in general are becoming less and less relevant with the advances in air warfare. They are OK until you really have to fight, they are good as offensive platforms with an enemy that has little in the way of ordance they can shoot back with, but as soon as it approaches some sort of even-ness, ships start to lose. The carrier battle group is the last effective sort of naval enterprise for actual *fighting* on any realistic scale, and that is primarily because it has it's own aircap and satellite remote sensing and protector subs set out in a perimeter. And only because they haven't been used in a nuclear environment, once nukes start getting used, well, missiles and nukes are still hard to stop, you lose. Right now, a large enough swarm of much cheaper sea skimming cruise missiles can overload any defenses and inflict significant damage, that is why they are trying hard to get the laser weapons operational. It's interesting to see where this will go, sucks they are doing it though. The planet (very generally speaking, applies to all nations and peoples) is still run by at best a few hundred seriously intelligent and seriously insane megalomaniacs, and all these other millions of people still "follow their orders".
How is their GUI front end to their firewall (if they have one,I do not know) compared to the mostly freebie industry standard zone alarm most folks use on windows? Any newb contemplating switching over is going to have "security" as one of the prime reasons. I DO know the first 15 minutes on the web are the most critical, the default install had better be secure or it rapidly gets into U_B_hosed territory.
If employees are able to buy stock, then they have another avenue of insisting on more-decent computing experiences at work. You go to the shareholders meetings and raise a stink over the problems with your software and bosses attitudes. There are several interesting avenues to explore there, pun intended.
There's also these things called unions, and they are useful for more things than just negotiating a raise. Unions have been used to help introduce worker safety,more sane and family friendly working hours, etc, so there's nothing stopping a union from working towards negotiating efficiency, either.
It's when you are JUST an employee and not a part owner, and when you are JUST negotiating alone instead of being part of a group that you will be constantly screwed in dealing with management problems.
and also HOW you live. With some lifestyle changes and a change of domicile, you can live quite well on 60 grand I would think. There's a big world out there beyond the top ten ridiculously expensive to live in US mega urban areas. And with the ability to telecommute to work, well, seems like it's a good deal to me.
Got to face facts, these big corporations could care less who they hire,or where they hire them, as long as the work gets done, and for the cheapest, hence all the outsourcing. It's not going away any time soon, so adapt to it or suffer would be the most prudent course to take.
What % (roughly, back of napkin rules apply) of your customers subscribing to these various TV on demand schemes would it take before you would start to lose money on bandwith increases over what you are facing right now?
for me it was easy.When I first started using a computer (on the net I mean, netsacpe 2 and netcom as the ISP, fooled with them before that,286's, DOS, didn't like it whatsoever )daily it was on my roomates 486 machine using windows 3.11. It was always fubarred, like every other day. I used it, but man it was painful. Went by a yard sale, saw a mac for sale. Had the lady run out an extension cord, booted it up. A few minutes later it was sold, and so was I, no IRQ conflicts,no jumpers, no driver hell, no tweaking, you could do what you wanted to do without getting headaches. Then many happy years of never getting a virus, never getting pwn3d, nuthin, just nice computin, everything just worked and it was very easy to use, never even owned a firewall. Eventually got some pentiums, started fooling around with linux after Jobs priced me out of macs and I got stuck not being able to upgrade to anything that would run OSX. It's luverly, linux is luverly. It's more difficult for a noob, but really, now, 98% of everything is easy to use GUI, at least for my purposes. I have a few windows machines here,the ones that are left over from that big batch of used junkers I bought, but barely ever use them, and mostly I fix them and give them away as a benevolent hobby, and that's it, after the last one is gone, no more windows at all. There is NO WAY I would ever put up with the virus du jour or BSOD or add your spies to my warez or anything like that, just "wouldn't be prudent". No need, no desire, I can spot a Yugo plenty good enough, no thankee. And the cost? Excuse me? They want HOW MUCH for that stuff? That ain't happening either.
Went to my ISP today to stop in and shoot the breeze and pay my bill. He runs a little whitebox shop as well. He's got a BIG ole sign out front WE WILL FIX YOUR VIRUSES. That's the advertising that drags in the customers. Not "get your copy of XP today!" Not "Windows Office,hot stuff! get it here!" Nope, "fix your viruses". Man, if that ain't reality. It's a gold mine for him.
.. it never ends, agenda 21, the desertification treaty,small arms, abuses by UN troops, issuing bogus vaccines, it never ends, now this amalgamation of bad news
"Article 6 - Right of Retransmission
Article 6 provides broadcasting organizations with an exclusive right to authorize the retransmission by any means of their broadcasts. The phrase "by any means" creates a dangerously broad grant of control over all retransmissions, including rebroadcasting and retransmission by wire, cable, or even over computer networks. This grant is broad enough to include a consumer who is sending a public domain movie through the Internet for non-commercial purposes. By including the redistribution through the Internet of broadcast media, the proposal goes well beyond its stated goal of applying to broadcasting organizations and regulates an enormous breadth of ordinary consumer activity, endangering freedom of expression on the Internet.
And this grant would give the traditional broadcasting industry a competitive advantage over webcasters and other "new-media" retransmitters who discover new and innovative ways of providing entertainment to consumers but will be prevented from doing so because this broad grant forecloses all future means of redistribution that is yet to be discovered.
Article 6 also provides broadcasting organizations with higher levels of protection over broadcasts than the law gives to the actual creators of the content being broadcast. Canada proposed a reservation to Article 6 out of concern that it creates "a situation where the level of protection of broadcasts would exceed the rights of the rightsholders of the content being broadcast."
further down it mentions an ubercopyright-like experience giveing broadcasters 50 years of ownership which *could* be construed to over rule even the original copyright! What masterminds thunked this up?
If that ain't sucky or what! Wonder how much them bozos got paid off for THIS masterpiece!
UN=somewhat decent idea, abysmal implementation, more stoopid and corrupt than most nations out there. Scrap it, start over again, IMO. And put their headquarters over to boogorillaville someplace, NOT inside the US. Let them goombahs enjoy the ambience someplace else.
It can't be done, "global government" would be orders of magnitude even more inefficient and more corrrupt than the soverign nations it wants to replace. We don't need either flavor of NWO, not the corporate axis of profit brand, nor the "stealth" axis of profit brand represented by the UN.
let's remove ALL the bricks. The entire system is more broken than not. For every intelligent decent thing they do, they do a dozen unintelligent obviously scam ridden corrupt things. That's a terrible "ROI".
Slashdot Mirror
I think the public perception of incompetence is just a crude smokescreen for malevolence. I have zero faith that what you are seeing now geopolitically from the US is being done to benefit the US middle class, the older traditional backbone of the US economy. On the contrary, everything we are seeing appears to only benefit a few international conglomerates.
The R&D now and into the future come from the same places it does now. 1/2 goes to uuniversities who get lucrative government grants and contracts, the other half go to private business contractors, with your usual secrecy, classified projects, and yada yada yada. It is changing slowly and going more international, either by putting the money outside the borders, or by similar to what they are doing now, importing the brains.
As to what technology is out there now, who REALLY believes "they" don't have a successor to the sr71 up and flying? Personally, I think they are probably 3 generations beyond sr71 technology.
And I agree,and not even in 50 years, try 10 to 15 years, I think the US will lose it's "public" top dog status, and I also think it's being done on purpose,completely on purpose, for a host of reasons,because it is part of an overall lofty heights connected elite globalism effort to make the planet a two class technofuedalistic big brother society. They also want to severely reduce the worlds population levels. I think it's fairly obvious, BTW, that this is happening. Governments by and large are increasingly irrelevent, they get *told* what to do, the rest is just soap opera for the peoples. That's a pretty involved subject and beyond some single post sized discussion, and a side issue, but it's my opinion on the subject.
Look at this info on nigeria, it's an opec member and has tremendous oil and natural gas reserves
According to this DOE fact sheet article, until recently they were flaring off almost all the natural gas, yet local villages had little electricity. I think I see the problem here. Looks like government payola, ripping off the people, various ill will, begats violence, more bad vibes, back and forth.
Just perhaps if they hadn't been ripped off for a long time maybe the people there wouldn't be so poor. Flaring off the gas for years instead of putting in generators to use the gas seems a scosh lame to me. I imagine this fact was not lost on the locals either. Who would be blamed then, the oil producers, the government doofus who gave them the contract? I have no idea, but right there you can see just one instance on how they got shafted.
I also just read a few pretty current news articles when I was looking for that reference link. Your typical back and forth warfare,massacres, people tapping into pipelines to get fuel, oil spills and fires and explosions then, etc. Chaos and anarchy mixed with huge international money and corruption and fascism. I have no idea how to help those people there, tribalism and warfare and serious government/oil industry corruption look like the major problems. I think perhaps if they just scrap the oil contracts and renotiate and require some actual infrastructure be put in instead of just arranging more cash to whatever local warlord du juor happens to be there with his hands out might work better. The actual hardware for electricity and normal communications, make the oil companies put it in. I would bet in one day some millionaire trader sitting in an office far away from nigeria, making a bundle off the nigerian oil, swapping oil futures commodites around could pay for this localised internet deal and then some, a lot of "then some". It's this whole system that causes the problems, so it's the whole system that needs to change. There's no excuse for a nation that wealthy to have such poor people and lack of the basics.
... the same I have had for a few years now. I think the government is trying to gradually remove the civilian space program, turn that over to private sources at an almost "hobby" level, and concentrate on pure classified military useages of space. They can claim "streamlined government" and "grand opportunities for the private sector" and so on, then go back to space being the military's job, which has always been the real #1 reason to even have a "space" program, ie, it's the high ground, who rules there wins.. It also can have a blacker budget even beyond what they have now. In adition, we've gotten to the point that international "cooperation" has gotten seriously into the giving away the family jewels level, it is no longer prudent to do so.
IMO anyway
Private space launches will continue,like now, and the normal commercial satellites etc, but that is old hat tech now. I am guessing even the best of them will be at the grade B level of technology, grade A will be held closer by the mil complex guys, and that will be the stealthing of "man in space" to the public. they might blather on about some mars mission in 10-20 years, in the meantime I bet they will be doing a lot more manned missions using more exotic craft than what they let on to.
--that is pretty accurate, I'll accept it for the most part. I have a scosh more nationalism and states-rights in me though, but it's close enough. For example, I don't see a little saner protectionism policy to be all that bad, as well as restricting immigration to only the legals. I am aware that a more global economy is here and coming more, I think we should mitigate it's effects on the US middle class more, ie, giving tax breaks to corps to offshore is kinda ill advised, and not insisiting on quid quo pro tariffs at the border is just plain nuts. Stuff like that.
I'll read it. Let's slashdot geocities.
;)
Wish I had kept mine I wrote back in junior high, this was just before the beatles by a couple of years IIRC, where I predicted the collapse of the social security system. what a hoot. I think I still type just as bad, too
... of the R party is what we used to call the eastern establishment rockefeller liberal wing of the party, back in the 60's and 70's. There was a huge power struggle then, and the traditionalists, who included a lot of the classical non interventionists and business ethics-matter types, lost, bigtime. That eastern establishment wing (your basic military - industrial complex-banking establishment sorts, now roughly classed as the globalists) took over in the 64 election, then re-concentrated their power when they forced bush 1 onto the ticket with reagan. The current occupiers in DC have little, I mean VERY little, in common with the traditionalists, although I will admit they have a lot of misguided fundies sucked into supporting them, based on "endtimes" prophecy and being israel-firsters, but that's actually a low number and they don't have as much influence as they think they do, but the R party will keep their votes anyway, just "because" they can.
At the top, the strings are pulled (speaking of both the D and R party now) by a few large banks and conglomerates, same as it always has been, and the various subgroupings/constituenceies are still being preached to in the exact words they want to hear, to keep up this generational-long congame.
Same old- same old stuff, just this eras version of "ohhh-new shiny so it MUST be improved.." tacked on top.
I'm personally so disgusted with the R party I don't even call myself conservative any more, they even ruined that word, turned it into something bad and noxious, when it used to just stand for honest, decency, small and efficient government, and more basic freedoms. Now I don't know what the heck it stands for other than it's "patriotic" to become a looter nation, and that lying is a commendable lifestyle choice.
As to the word "liberal", that was abused even further, what passes for a defintion now as liberal has nothing to do with a classical liberal from the olden daza. It certainly never meant just wholesale wealth transference to pick up votes, like it means now.
I consider myself now just a traditional Constitutionalist,an independent, with a strict interpretation based on the english words and defintions that were used at the time of the writing of the Constitution. For a very common example, the state of Vermont has the only true implementation of the second amendment, IMO. The federal government sure doesn't, that's for sure.
I would say there's handful left of high ranking pols in both parties who are actual patriots and constitutionalists, but they are a severe minority. Most of the rest are all various flavors of garden variety crooks, IMO.
The good news is, we have developed a huge number of people who have gotten over voting for criminal gang A or B,or have stopped voting entirely, which means there exists a base of *potential* voters and activists who could conceivably take back government from the gangs who run it-some time anyway. It would take quite the grassroots effort to be sure. And there's also a growing number of what are called disaffected voters who used to classify themselves as R or D but are now neutral and looking harder at reality. This is good, and the net sure helps to break the programming and brainwashing that has gone on for years.
It always pays to remember oil when ever discussing ajny geopolitics. China is much more dependent now on oil/energy supplies than it is on a consumer market backed by pieces of paper that the US market represents to them. They have been smart. If you look at what they have been doing with the dollars exported to them for consumer goods, they have been turning around, taking the same exact dollars, and investing in machine tools, etc, the stuff that builds wealth, all the way to entire factories, plus sucking in western investment money to build even larger manufacturing infrastructure. The major US car companies have all announced recently investments in manufacturing plants there-and not for the export market back to the US, but for their domestic market. And that's just one example of many. Increasingly, the US market is losing importance to them, it won't be needed (soon enough) now that they have a large enough middle class to be "consumers' themselves. It's also one of the primary reasons the federal reserve note has been dropping in world wide trading circles-it's no longer necessary for the rest of the world to trade with the buck being the "reserve" currency. It only came about as the reserve currency from the "petrodollar" phenomenon, combined with the fact we USED to be the planets big dog on exporting manufactured goods.
As to china not hating us, this contradicts their military posture, which regards the US first and foremost as their number one enemy and whom they would be at war with in the future. "Hate" per se has not much to do with it realistically, it's just practicality for them. They NEED the oil, we NEED the oil, the EU NEEDS the oil and the explosively growing (pun intended) islamic "world" NEEDS the oil, but there's only enough for ONE of those planetary subgroups left if you look at the next 1-3 decades and whatpasses for proven reserves. And I am even leaving out India, south america and africa and japan, so you can see it's even worse. A few nations left can be self sufficient, nations like canada in particular, russia, brazil, etc, but most nations are completely dependent on cheap oil, and cheap oil is going away soon. and when you are as large as china, well, you can see the potentialities there.
Right now, the US economy is hanging on by a slim thread that is unraveling, precisely because we gave away our diverse manufacturing advantages we had. We gained that edge when we mostly traded our own products within the 50 states and also produced a lot of our own oil at an extremely cheap cost, both in terms of money and in terms of BTUS needed to get more BTUs. Once that started to slip, in the late 60's, we switched even more to foreign sources of oil, but world wide demand was not as great then either, so we were able to continue. That is not the case now, not even close. And china in particular has a projected demand that is amazing, it is going to be shortly higher than our own, and because we don't supply that much oil, and because they have got about all the machine tools and factories and cheap R&D they need from us already,the era of extremely cheap chinese goods to the US will start to slow down as china will be providing those goods to the places that have the worlds *true* reserve currency, which is bulk oil, and that ain't us. In short, we will pretty soon (a matter of some years to perhaps just one more decade) not really have anything china wants or needs, and our dollars will be worth much less to them. It's taken 3 decades on chinas part and our own globalist traders part to transfer all the wealth producing facilities from here to there, but it's about "done" now, so I expect the economic ramifications to be getting exponentially worse, with the resulting political ramificiations to be even MORE worse.
I've brought up the same exact points I can't say how many times on forums and in meatspace, trying to show people how they have been brainwashed. You get met with incredulity, or they claim you are lying or something. I am not amazed any longer at most peoples outright ignorance, and how fast you can move a large population towards extreme jingoism and genocidal thoughts. The worlds master manipulators can play on any sub group they target, whether a nation or religious group or socio/economic/political sub group or "party" like a tuned violin using nothing more than gradeschool indoctrination and control over the most prevalent form locally of the mass media. It takes quite a bit of smarts, integrity and hard work just to get to all the sides of an issue, and even more to come to a contrarian position. Speaking any actual DATA is enough to get you labeled as an "extremist" in a lot of cases. It's in all nations and cultures, too, you can see it, and the worlds bankers/militarist profiteers have been laughing about it for centuries now, because it's a congame that just keeps on working for them.
what's the name of it?
--I've dropped coin on computers before, new and still expensive used, just so happens this is my favorite one of the dozen or so scattered around the room right now, although at best any of them are pentium 2s, 333's, 400s, etc. It is not the fastest clock speed, but it is the most *reliable* one of the bunch and I have had it the longest and it's just comfortable. Can't explain it any better than that-comfortable. I don't know why either, but it is. I have some dells, compaqs and various flavors of whiteboxes. My last brandy new one-a mac- though took a direct lightning hit on the line right outside, and was damaged severely, even through the surge protector. It still ran kinda sorta but I scrapped it. I really liked that machine. Since then I dropped almost a grand on a used laptop, then decided that was ridiculous to keep doing that every year or two, decided to wait a few years before getting another, so I have.
/me goes over to compost pile for visual and olfactory inspection, to see if it's cooked enough to use in the garden. heh heh heh. Stuff like that. Not to mention what goes INTO said alleged compost pile. Joe office worker with the 2.3 lb laptop would be going WTF? and EWWWWW!
I'm just going on a real rough rule of thumb in pricing, laptops were/are always around double the price of desktops for some *rough* similar numbers. To me, that means laptop prices are not dropping as fast as desktops, probably because they have a corporate mindset different criteria of shooting for the lightest weight and thinnest cross section, etc. That's a guess though. I keep reading bitch after bitch about laptop battery life, when the solution is still therte, just put up with a weight that was normal a few years ago, and pout in bigger battery or batteries, but no one is doing that. increase electrical demand, drop battery size, pray that modern battery tech works enough people won't return the machines after using them one day. I think that's nuts, but it's not my call there. I don't know what happened to people they lost strength or something, an extra 1 or 2 lbs seems to be so important people will pay an extra 500$ or something for that.. I'm a blue collar worker, so I guess that's why I don't understand it, that seems so trivially light to me, I'd much rather have a big large amp hour decent battery, and I think most users and corporate types aren't laborers, so to them that is too heavy or something. I'm not trolling or anything,or putting anyone down, just guessing as to the market demand. the mindset that goes to that market demand is totally alien to me, I admit that. I just never understood being afraid of any slight physical exertion,like carrying a laptop that is 2 lbs heavier here and there between airconditioned office and car and coffeeshop,but then paying money to go to some workout club is all. To me it's silly, but to each their own, I certainly do some silly stuff, ow what would appear totally silly to some urbanite, that's for sure. Same with cell phones now, almost all the new ones I see are useless, i don't like them, because they are TOO small, I can't see the screens or use what passes for a keyboard. It's called geezer eyes. And back to urban/rural silliness, heh, yep, just thinking about it. I can poke fun at meselfs too.
%^)
I still think there's a good market for a real low watt/low power needed but "good enough" set of specs with a cheap laptop, especially if they weren't as concerned with the weight and put beefy batteries in the thing to get run times up where they should be, ie, at least a full working day-8 hrs, plus a smidgen. I don't know how hard that would be to pull off, but I bet it would be MUCHO easier if they weren't as concerned with lightness and "looks" and thiness.
Like I said, there's a ton of high end powerful and expensive options, but a dearth of NEW low end options that are good enough and cheap enough at the laptop market. I no longer see any reason for having computers be obsolete every year, and like I said, I don't "game",
thankyou for the clarification of the urban legend. A quick google check showed a lot of sites still reporting the sheffield as being made of aluminum(which was merely my recollection of the reported events back then), but enough with cred, like your link, prove otherwise, so I stand corrected with this material science refresher. Thank you. They did switch back to all or mostly all steel though for new ship design,from various problems with aluminum (mostly it is not that great for armor), some mention in the article in the following link.
For anyone interested, who might not have been around to remember this short but nasty war,here is a link to a short history of the conflict
... the displays. They should be replaceable easy and be sorta standard. But isn't that lcd price full retail? If it was gotten by the manufacturere and sold as part of the laptop system, seems like it could be cheaper, overall. All I know is, whomever comes up with an upgradeable laptop, something that isn't obsolete junk in two years AND can be fixed/repaired/upgraded, around my price range, and preferably running linux from an OEM install so everything "just works", will be getting my business. and I bet they'll sell a lot of them, too, make it on volume.
I know what I want doesn't exist yet, so I'll just hold out then. I have enough for now. Same thing I did with computers in general, I had to hold out until there were used ones that were affordable for me on the market.
cell phones now, something that works perfectly fine =30$
or
wifi AP = 70$
PDAs of various flavors,or music/media machines 2-300$, these are just small computers now, realistically
LCD screens as mentioned=200$
Now that is all retail, seems like they could be combined and get *close* to 500$. I know it's not there yet, but still, it's sniffin distance now, if some company wants to head thataway
Well, even so, it's still would be better than what I am using now, a PP200. I know all sorts of people still using older systems because they paid a lot of money for them and they still work well enough. So, you are right on what is top end now or midrange, but the centaur guys observations that his chips are good enough for 90% of what most people use a computer for are most likely still valid. Here on slashdot you have a much higher ratio of people who have brand new or pretty new systems than you do in the "general" population, and uber geeks tend to hang out more with other uber geeks, so perhaps they don't see it as much. I know most corporate bosses make so much money and live such a different lifestyle it's hard for them to relate to joe working stiff, that's why you see so many weird business changes-marketing and the bosses can't relate to most people, they lose track of anything outside their little niche worlds of much better off financially people than any sort of median-norm. I know there's no company out there that I have seen is offering any sort of new laptop that even possibly could be in my price range, so I hang on to the older ones, and I bought them used. Same with my desktops.
There's different niches out there, and there's a huge niche where "cheap and good enough" is still king, and it was refreshing to see an article on slashdot where that is covered, usually it's some new thing that is the fastest/best and most expensive, and most energy hog as well, and seeing as how I am into alternative energy, I always look at that angle. I don't want an electrical sub station needed to power me and my house and stuff, I think that is beyoind ridiculous and getting into the generational greedy range. that's ME, others can think different, but it is how I think...
This guy at centaur gets it on where his market is, and I'm exactly the sort of person he is thinking of, that's why I wondered if any company had an upgradeable cheap laptop based on his cpu/mobo stuff yet. Like my desktop, when I get ready I'll put a new board and CPU in it, but for now, this is "good enough" for me, just never seen a laptop I can do the same thing with, and I want low power, good battery life, and upgradeable by switching a few cables and slapping in a new board for cheap a few years hence.
Just a-wondering is all, no biggee. If I really wanted or needed a liquid cooled monster like we see all the time here, I guess I would get one, but it would be overkill for my needs, and definetly suck way too much juice and throw too much heat. don't need it really, like I said, don't do games or modeling or whatever. Folks who do got tons of choices, folks who don't got almost squat for choices it appears, and I despise the forced upgrade business solutions we keep seeing.. There's plenty of choices out there in that expensive/faster/ mo powah direction, but very few choices the other way.
People HAVE been "up in arms" over this invasive technology for years and years, and you know what happens? People said it was "tin foil hat, it'll never happen" etc. I say that because it hasd happened to me, over and over again. Step by step by step, all the bad crap that was predicted (by myself and thousands of other people clanging the alarm bells) has been proven TRUE, despite being called "luddites" or "paranoid". I had so called intellectually hip total morons as late as two years ago SWEAR that RFID tags would never be readable past a few inches maximum, or that they wouldn't be put in everything, or the tech was not good enough to be used for data mining of tracking, or that the thought that cameras everywhere would never happen, etc. I distinctly remember being told I was SO wrong and yada yada. check out drudge right now, big article about new cams going up in baltimorte 24/7, all over, because "we are at war now". Phooie. Cameras everywhere, chips in everything, the government and so called "law" being totally yanked away from the average person, the news a globalist propoganda and brainwashing arm more than anything else.. perpetual war for perpetual profits. Big brother loves you, and etc. We have always been at war with eastasia and.... more lies.
Double phooie, it's happening, and really,really fast now.
This stuff is EASY to predict, it IS the implementation of a complete and total big brother slave society. And that is a carefully picked word, "slaves". That's it in a nutshell, taken as an aggregate. The good news is FINALLY more than a few people are sounding the alarm, but man, it's been rough to deal with it.
NOW, RFID tags in "stuff" is coming, it's here now, no one stopped it, because it was new and shiny and and geeky and "the war on...." whatever various scams and shams, and it is ALSO coming in the form of forced embedded RFID tags in your person. It is GOING to happen, because people will not say no to it, they will wait until it's too late. They are doing it to the military first, the order followers by choice, then cops, then everyone else so that the enforers, the globalists muscle, can say "WE got the chip, now shuttup and take yours, or else".
Or else. "Or else" that's the "stick" part. Now all you got to be is accused, that's it, some brainwashed bozo just declares you a non person, an "untermenschen" and you are 100% screwed. That's here NOW and it's "legal".
This is so freakin easy to see coming. And it was easier when they started with the gun control crap, they have to disarm their victim populations first.
I got no easy answers to it. I know I was warning people decades ago, telling them then to just say no, to pay attention to what is going on, to STOP supporting the criminal gangs that hijacked the nation years ago, to stop cooperating with them and to exert a smidgen of ethics and moral control and common sense when they did business.
Nope, football and video games and various other bread and circuses "entertainments" and staying half drunk or stoned all the time seem to be more important to most people. We have MORE people now aware and active in resisting, but it's still a small percentage, but we DO have the net, so that's a good thing. Maybe it will be mitigated, I still don't think so, not when the goons manipulate the money and can make anyone a criminal by merely writing new laws.
At best I can say I will resist forced chipping, and try to avoid as many products as I can with tracking/data accumulating chips in them, using any means necessary, and I recommend the same to anyone else, that and refusing to work for "the man" if I can use the old phrase here.
We had a better one in the 60's, "you are part of the problem, or part of the solution", basically, there are *no neutrals*.
we have the cheap desktops now, like the walmart 200 buck boxes, but does anyone make a *new* laptop that uses this guys chips and a via mobo, and is it under 500 clams brand new? what he says is true, and I'm in that 90% range that what passes for a mid range speed is MORE than enough for my purposes. I don't do gaming or weather modeling, etc. That's the breakthrough and the sweetspot general pricing range I am waiting for, the linux laptop,comes complete and works outta-the-box, including wireless, under 500$, and *upgradeable*. Is this possible now? Say it is, I mean, 3-4 years from now I could replace the whole mobo with whatever is cool then, along those lines, yet alone just swapping in a new cpu, etc. And a REAL battery (or batteries even better, in some sort of standardized arrangement, with 12 volt DC input being standard) in it, I'll tote a couple extra lbs, I don't need a laptop to weigh sub-3 lbs, 6-7 is still quite acceptable, it's the same as the ones I have now. His chip at 7 watts sounds great, and 1 ghz is perfectly acceptable. Heck, even if it had a switch to toggle it back and forth between 3 watts and 7 watts would be nice, as in clocked/not clocked.
Desktops are a different story, you can always swap around parts and do a little drilling and cutting, etc to make anything fit, but laptops are teh sucks for upgrading and working on, more or less, and they are too expensive as they are sold now to change out very often (for me I mean, but bet a lot of other folks feel the same way). I'd get one and use it for my main desktop most of the time then with an external keyboard and my regular mouse and monitor, scrap energy hog desktops, but retain the option of true portability.
but I bumped mine to 228 ram to run linux (FC2 now) with gnome. I started with just 32 megs(that sure didn't work with any useable GUI), and as I added some sticks it just got much better. Although I just may try out some of the other recommended winow managers though and strip my system down, as additional RAM for this machine is antique expensive, Just adding another stick of 128 and trying to find the other matching processor and voltage regulator immediately bumps cost into a brand new bare bones system range, so I haven't done it. Shame, too, because it's such a reliable machine, An ibm 365 12u made in 96 with the dual processor board, just an off the wall one, doesn't seem to match any of the other dual PP boards that I have looked at to try and scrounge the dual processor parts.
Ships made out of aluminum are hugely vulnerable to damage from a relatively cheap cruise missile, as proved in the falklands (was that the sheffield? One of you brits or argentines help me out here).
carbon fiber, although lighter and etc etc with the article, will not be able to take much damage at all before it is ineffective, it just won't. I know the *idea* is to be stealthy so you don't take damage, but as soon as you release one shot of anything, your position is out there.
Navies in general are becoming less and less relevant with the advances in air warfare. They are OK until you really have to fight, they are good as offensive platforms with an enemy that has little in the way of ordance they can shoot back with, but as soon as it approaches some sort of even-ness, ships start to lose. The carrier battle group is the last effective sort of naval enterprise for actual *fighting* on any realistic scale, and that is primarily because it has it's own aircap and satellite remote sensing and protector subs set out in a perimeter. And only because they haven't been used in a nuclear environment, once nukes start getting used, well, missiles and nukes are still hard to stop, you lose. Right now, a large enough swarm of much cheaper sea skimming cruise missiles can overload any defenses and inflict significant damage, that is why they are trying hard to get the laser weapons operational. It's interesting to see where this will go, sucks they are doing it though. The planet (very generally speaking, applies to all nations and peoples) is still run by at best a few hundred seriously intelligent and seriously insane megalomaniacs, and all these other millions of people still "follow their orders".
FreeWarFalling
of course, maybe some one has done it already.
How is their GUI front end to their firewall (if they have one,I do not know) compared to the mostly freebie industry standard zone alarm most folks use on windows? Any newb contemplating switching over is going to have "security" as one of the prime reasons. I DO know the first 15 minutes on the web are the most critical, the default install had better be secure or it rapidly gets into U_B_hosed territory.
If employees are able to buy stock, then they have another avenue of insisting on more-decent computing experiences at work. You go to the shareholders meetings and raise a stink over the problems with your software and bosses attitudes. There are several interesting avenues to explore there, pun intended.
There's also these things called unions, and they are useful for more things than just negotiating a raise. Unions have been used to help introduce worker safety,more sane and family friendly working hours, etc, so there's nothing stopping a union from working towards negotiating efficiency, either.
It's when you are JUST an employee and not a part owner, and when you are JUST negotiating alone instead of being part of a group that you will be constantly screwed in dealing with management problems.
and also HOW you live. With some lifestyle changes and a change of domicile, you can live quite well on 60 grand I would think. There's a big world out there beyond the top ten ridiculously expensive to live in US mega urban areas. And with the ability to telecommute to work, well, seems like it's a good deal to me.
Got to face facts, these big corporations could care less who they hire,or where they hire them, as long as the work gets done, and for the cheapest, hence all the outsourcing. It's not going away any time soon, so adapt to it or suffer would be the most prudent course to take.
What % (roughly, back of napkin rules apply) of your customers subscribing to these various TV on demand schemes would it take before you would start to lose money on bandwith increases over what you are facing right now?
for me it was easy.When I first started using a computer (on the net I mean, netsacpe 2 and netcom as the ISP, fooled with them before that,286's, DOS, didn't like it whatsoever )daily it was on my roomates 486 machine using windows 3.11. It was always fubarred, like every other day. I used it, but man it was painful. Went by a yard sale, saw a mac for sale. Had the lady run out an extension cord, booted it up. A few minutes later it was sold, and so was I, no IRQ conflicts,no jumpers, no driver hell, no tweaking, you could do what you wanted to do without getting headaches. Then many happy years of never getting a virus, never getting pwn3d, nuthin, just nice computin, everything just worked and it was very easy to use, never even owned a firewall. Eventually got some pentiums, started fooling around with linux after Jobs priced me out of macs and I got stuck not being able to upgrade to anything that would run OSX. It's luverly, linux is luverly. It's more difficult for a noob, but really, now, 98% of everything is easy to use GUI, at least for my purposes. I have a few windows machines here,the ones that are left over from that big batch of used junkers I bought, but barely ever use them, and mostly I fix them and give them away as a benevolent hobby, and that's it, after the last one is gone, no more windows at all. There is NO WAY I would ever put up with the virus du jour or BSOD or add your spies to my warez or anything like that, just "wouldn't be prudent". No need, no desire, I can spot a Yugo plenty good enough, no thankee. And the cost? Excuse me? They want HOW MUCH for that stuff? That ain't happening either.
Went to my ISP today to stop in and shoot the breeze and pay my bill. He runs a little whitebox shop as well. He's got a BIG ole sign out front WE WILL FIX YOUR VIRUSES. That's the advertising that drags in the customers. Not "get your copy of XP today!" Not "Windows Office,hot stuff! get it here!" Nope, "fix your viruses". Man, if that ain't reality. It's a gold mine for him.
.. it never ends, agenda 21, the desertification treaty,small arms, abuses by UN troops, issuing bogus vaccines, it never ends, now this amalgamation of bad news
"Article 6 - Right of Retransmission
Article 6 provides broadcasting organizations with an exclusive right to authorize the retransmission by any means of their broadcasts. The phrase "by any means" creates a dangerously broad grant of control over all retransmissions, including rebroadcasting and retransmission by wire, cable, or even over computer networks. This grant is broad enough to include a consumer who is sending a public domain movie through the Internet for non-commercial purposes. By including the redistribution through the Internet of broadcast media, the proposal goes well beyond its stated goal of applying to broadcasting organizations and regulates an enormous breadth of ordinary consumer activity, endangering freedom of expression on the Internet.
And this grant would give the traditional broadcasting industry a competitive advantage over webcasters and other "new-media" retransmitters who discover new and innovative ways of providing entertainment to consumers but will be prevented from doing so because this broad grant forecloses all future means of redistribution that is yet to be discovered.
Article 6 also provides broadcasting organizations with higher levels of protection over broadcasts than the law gives to the actual creators of the content being broadcast. Canada proposed a reservation to Article 6 out of concern that it creates "a situation where the level of protection of broadcasts would exceed the rights of the rightsholders of the content being broadcast."
further down it mentions an ubercopyright-like experience giveing broadcasters 50 years of ownership which *could* be construed to over rule even the original copyright! What masterminds thunked this up?
If that ain't sucky or what! Wonder how much them bozos got paid off for THIS masterpiece!
UN=somewhat decent idea, abysmal implementation, more stoopid and corrupt than most nations out there. Scrap it, start over again, IMO. And put their headquarters over to boogorillaville someplace, NOT inside the US. Let them goombahs enjoy the ambience someplace else.
It can't be done, "global government" would be orders of magnitude even more inefficient and more corrrupt than the soverign nations it wants to replace. We don't need either flavor of NWO, not the corporate axis of profit brand, nor the "stealth" axis of profit brand represented by the UN.
let's remove ALL the bricks. The entire system is more broken than not. For every intelligent decent thing they do, they do a dozen unintelligent obviously scam ridden corrupt things. That's a terrible "ROI".