..like not going to war based on manufactured alleged intelligence, having accountability and honest audits at the Fed and Treasury, having a more sane and fair monetary and tax policy, letting capitalistic industries fail when they come up with pseudo products that offer nothing and that no one wants much anymore, letting them fail in the marketplace where it belongs instead of putting everyone in hock to cover their gambling debts, reining in our of control bureaucratic edicts that sidestep the normal legislative process, getting the Federal government out of State government's business, having real security instead of creeping big brother-ism fascist policies disguised as security theater and so on...ya, just too weird, no one would ever want that stuff...
It works out about as well as my making similar decisions to not be a thief or crook, to not be a predator on other people, to not lie or cheat, etc. And ya, part of it is to feel good with yourself, to stay honest with yourself. I see it as simple normal ethics, nothing really strange or exotic about it.
I think crooked and corrupt government sucks, so I won't vote for it. Voting is not a very long nor involved process after all, taken as something you only do once a year or two or four, so it is easy enough to just vote the way you really want to and be done with it. As to my life in general, it's OK, I'm fine with myself.
The reality is, there is no compromise with chronic crooks and thieves and liars, they pretty much won't change (certainly not voluntarily,not usually anyway broadly speaking) and voting for them just reinforces their mindset that what they are doing is OK.
In a different field, medicine, with substance abuse and out of control addicts, helping them get a fix is called enabling, and it is usually recommended that people don't do that...because it doesn't work.
If you know someone is a thief and want them to stop being a thief, you don't fence their goods for them and think that will somehow magically change them into honest people. That would be quite illogical and borderline...nuts again. Crazy, stupid and crazy.
It is a very simple concept to grok. And I won't be an enabler of destructive and anti social behavior, which corrupt government can be loosely classed as.
From my POV, I really want C, and equally don't want A or B for various reasons (and I highly suspect most A or B voters feel almost the same but elect to hold their nose and pick A or B and then fall back on the "wishful thinking, this time will be different, lucy will really hold the football for charlie brown *this time*" theory, which seems rather pointless in this day and age given all the verifiable data that historical hindsight provides us now to look at)
It matters naught to me which of A or B gets in, as either will pick my pocket and infringe on some liberty, and between them they pick both pockets and infringe all liberties over time, with the trends always headed towards more thievery and more liberty infringing. (current example, old admin, R, billionaire bailouts for corporate casino gamblers who stiffed each other and millions of innocent "investors" with total made up looney tunes alleged "products", now the new administration, D, the big change! billionaire bailouts for corporate casino gamblers. Both administrations packed with insider casino gamblers, put in charge of the real economy. There's no practical diff I can see.)
Like I said, they, given their criminal priorities, have a facade of some big difference, which is on which pocket to start at, or which liberty to infringe on some list they have, but eventually they'll get around to all of them. So I'll stick with C (or D or E or...) and advocate other folks do the same.
Ya, it sucks rubber donkey dong, obviously dealing with the political soup nazi system we have (to keep with the restaurant analogy o_0 ), but my conscious is clear that I haven't voted for some cretin/political gang who will take not only my loot and freedom, but YOUR loot and freedom (and yours, and yours, and yours, and them folks over there, too), which is just as important to me. Certainly I have my priorities and issues, but chances are they aren't exactly the same as yours, but overall, if we don't look out for each others well being..well...there ya go, we don't. We sink. Buh bye, nice civilization while we had it.
History books are all full of failed empires and civilizations, and they mostly croak from massive greed and the lust for power over other humans, the loss of looking out for your neighbor (even if you and he differ on any number of things), the ceasing of caring for the weaker and more innocent, having megalomaniacs as leaders and criminal gangs trying to pass as official government. Corruption, rot, decay..entropy rules I guess...
How bad is it, how bad can it get? Can't say other than since I have been politically aware and paying some attention (more or less a half century now) it has steadily gone downhill across all the fronts. Not steady, it has spikes of occasional and temporary outbreaks of common sense and honesty and fairness and justice, but it falls under that old saying one step forward, two steps back.
IF we don't do things differently, and get back to the original idea of the individual is the sovereign and government is our employee and not our lord and master and trans national corporations are NOT the government NOR some unelected perpetual class of neo-royal aristocratic rulers (I thought we had that sorted out in the 1700s as a bad idea..) and only are made/kept legal when they follow our social contract of being of benefit to society (the other part of the original corporate charter idea besides "make profits" that the pirates and looters always have collective amnesia over)..then we are screwed. It could and probably will get fairly ugly, history teaches us that as well.
So my bottom line is..I won't vote for them fellers or that sort of system, it is binary for me, yes, no, there is no "maybe, if.." there that has any credible validity.
You won't get an expanded menu until you tell the restaurant owner you aren't buying either the chicken and rice or rice and chicken and stick to it. If you just keep buying one of the two exactly the same selections on the menu, he isn't going to change, no matter how much you ask or beg for a third or fourth or fifth choice.
With voting, you can do this. You have to crack 1% to get to 2%, then crack 2 to get to 3 and so on. We've had examples in the past where third party candidates hit close to 10%, and when that level hit and the high level corrupt goons in the R and D parties got scared, and with the help of the compliant media demonizing or outright ignoring those alternatives and hijacked congress keeping the voting regs tilted in favor of the same two parties, it dropped back down. And the media IS complicit, they only "allow" the two major parties in the so called national debates. The league of women voters dropped sponsorship of the debates over that stance and being forced to acquiesce to some other shenanigans like scripting in advance, they refused to participate any longer and called it a "fraud on the american people". The big corporate media should have had the integrity and balls to do exactly the same at the exact same time, but being mostly controlled tools and way more a propaganda arm of the establishment than being independent journalists, they didn't.
In other words, I categorically reject the notion that casting the ONE vote you have for who you really want is a waste. Maintaining that criminal gang duopoly by spending your one vote-and that is all you have realistically- on it is the only true waste (that or not voting at all) if you really don't want that criminal duopoly to remain in power. I know I have a clear conscious, been voting third or alternate party for decades now, and I can say I don't vote for the status quo of corruption and malfeasance in government as "business as usual".
If you vote for one of those back room and media picked for you political sock puppets. no matter what your reason if it is anything except really wanting that particular doofus...that's it, that is who you voted for and you are affirming their continuance of corruption and malfeasance. It doesn't matter what you think in the back of your mind, what matters is that you personally gave them a signal that what they are doing is perfectly fine. If you don't want to do that, then don't, and it is that simple.
The more people who are not made artificially afraid of that the better. I refuse to be intimidated by this threat of "wasting your vote", because I've been around long enough to clearly see the only major difference with those two criminal gangs is which of your pockets they want to pick first, and which of our born with rights they put at the head of the list to infringe on. I just slap refuse to vote in the affirmative for either of those bogus alleged choices.
If "we all" took your advice and "waited until computers get better" before the joe masses guy bought one, we'd be stuck now back in 486 or earlier days still.
There has to be mass quantities demand for products for the R and D guys to keep going and to develop both the prototypes *and* -and this is important- the manufacturing technology to be able to bring "quantities of scale" into the scene so we have further price drops and quality increases. My PV panels are now 10 years old and still work fine, and I am happy/glad/proud to have been part of the alternate energy solution back then by sticking my wallet where my mouth was and getting some. I'll do it again when it is time to replace those. Same as I have a stack of old computers in my shed that are about useless today, but by me buying them I helped encourage and fund further computer development. Now my personal cash involved in both computers and solar PV is small, but taken as my part of the aggregate consumer demand-it added up to we have some decent advances, and I knew full well back then that the stuff would be getting better, but I chose not to wait for the "other guy".
There's a saying we had back in the 60s that just fits so well in any number of scenarios, "you are part of the problem, or part of the solution". I think de-centralized power that joe sixpack can actually own and pay off, and get away from the energy price fixing cartels that only rent you the infrastructure forever with no way to ever pay them off, is just so spiffy an idea economically and politically and socially (no wars over access to sunshine for instance, as opposed to oil and uranium and associated tech) that I am willing to jump in and be part of the solution and not wait, even though I know it will be "better" later on.
Hmm, just dawned on me one of the ways how I afforded it too (I don't make that much at all), just by rerarranging what parts of my disposable income I had. My venture into solar PV just about exactly coincides in time with my ceasing supporting the **AA media goons by stopping buying their full bloat price marked up "entertainment" copies. You could take that idea and run with it and maybe afford at least some of your power needs -say-give up the satellite or cable Tv bill, make do with free OTA digital signals for the TV and your entertainment, and stick that 50 to 100 bucks a month toward paying off at least a modest 1 kw solar rig, something like that. And if you do the install yourself it saves a lot (except for final circuit box install, that needs a licensed electrician, pay one hour labor, whatever, for that). Replace a circuit or two in your house. There's no need to go whole house or nothing with solar PV, just pick the one or two circuits you REALLY don't want to lose in a power failure, the circuit that drives your furnace blower for example, or your freezer and fridge, or if you go battery bank, the home office so it is a big UPS system, etc, your choice and along those lines.
I really don't. All these wireless telco providers have transfer caps, so what difference does it make if you are looking at the screen on the phone or the laptop or desktop screen? They sell access, plus a certain amount of bytes per your plan per the dollars you give them, so it's the same money! Why are they so worried about tethering then? It seems like the opposite would be true if they are in competition with each other, make your cellphone and plan attractive and easy for tethering and advertise it as such, get more customers, sell more of your easier to use and more featureful phones and more (giga or mega whatever) bytes of transfer.
What is it worth, in terms of dollars and power, to hijack big elections, to wind up owning the government? Now, what is the worth of the entire total electronic voting machine "industry"? Now subtract the second from the first, notice the result... in other words, the real vote hijackers never cared a bit about the potential of losing some penny ante chump change pawn company down the timeline sometime, especially if they were the ones "in charge" of "insuring the integrity of the vote" in the first place...
If you are good with a router-a woodworking router I mean-you could take the case from your laptop and laminate the outside with some sort of pretty wood veneer, and that leaves whatever RF shielding it has intact. Thinking about it, it is such a small area to laminate you could do it with just hand tools if you are careful, say a razor knife. Make a nice construction paper pattern then lay it out on the veneer and cut away what you need, then glue it on. Anyway, I imagine it has already been done it seems so possible...I will look... here's a link to an example. This guy uses a laser cutter but I don't think that is necessary either if you are just careful enough. In the replies there they make a point of bringing up the heating option, I guess that wouldn't matter a whole lot if your lappy had fans though.
They make custom skins for cellphones, seems a little biz niche there to do it with laptops or perhaps the new netbooks....
Rural area, att/bell south. Lucky to get anything above 28.8 anymore, and they have no plans whatsoever to improve service that I have been able to determine from them. The last place we lived, which was way, WAY the heck more out in the sticks and up multiple dirt roads, was/is served by a smaller community telco and unfortunately for me but good for everyone else there, just when we were moving that little telco ran really decent thick underground copper to EVERY residence in their area that needed an upgrade, so they could offer good quality broadband, etc.
My conclusion is, if it is profitable for those little bitty service providers to do it, the only reason the larger ones don't is because they are complete jerks about things and outright lying about what it costs them.
...wait until you get older and have to try and see that crap on those tiny screens with your old quadfocal eyes and try to type on them teeny designed for Japanese kids keyboards with your stiff fingers, then you *might* get a clue why a spoken way to interact with the web on those devices might be useful. I'd like that on my desktop, let alone some Lilliputian cellphone.
Now, don't get off my lawn, see that mower? Yank that cord and start pushing it and work off some of those cheetos!
Who do battery operated computer devices use just one battery, when there are at least three distinct types of electrical demand that go on? Seems like they should have two or three different types of batteries, and the device is smart enough to switch to the appropriate one quickly. You have high draw and demand, max CPU, your drive spinning, the fans kick on, your wireless is activated, then there is more casual use, then sleep/hibernation. Couldn't different types of batteries address this better than trying a one size fits nothing perfectly scenario?
Same with electric or hybrid cars, they need fast huge release type batteries or ultracaps (or hydraulic pressurized type storage) just to get up to speed from a stop and for braking regneration, then it shoud switch to long haul slow release type batts (possibly much less expensive batts then as well).
A lot of these huge corporations, being international in scope, have no loyalty to the US per se, just a place to hang their corporate hat and suck all they can out of the situation. As such, not only being too large is a general security threat, them having little to no loyalty is as well. If their corporate mindset boils down to "anything to make profit" and that's it, yep, a security threat because they will sell out if the price is right and they think they can get away with it, whatever unethical or criminal act "it" is.
I guess I'd have to disagree. I can't think of a single company, or to put it better, some manufactured item or offered service, that is so necessary that it is the only one that needs to be doing it, and I would include real big ticket items like ships and subs and power plants etc. Monopolies suck, fullstop.
There's room enough for several companies at least even at the most complex levels, heck, I'll include space exploration there as well. If companies aren't allowed to fail from incompetence or a changed business environment in society, what's the point of their capitalism stance then? That's why I would have MUCH preferred if they let those ludicrous casino derivative spewing monster banks go bust, because 99% of their so called "financial products" are complete fantasy BS contracts based on bets on bets on bets and shouldn't be tied to the real economy in any manner whatsoever, they should be firewalled off and allowed to go bust. Let them have fun ripping each other off, but not the general poulation they are now. I think they are thieves and bunco artist fraudsters at extremely scary levels. Jail not bail in other words for those gents. Madoff is a piker compared to most of them, IMO. Frankly, I think the US government now is so corrupt and so much in bed with supporting those wall street criminals and parasites I would support a second secessionary effort by some state or states, just to get away from those lying thieves and blood profits murderers.
As to the pet thing, that sucks! Someone has an injury or loses their job, their economics go down the crapper, they are already bummed out and psychologically damaged, and their loving pet which means a lot to them and that loves them back needs some care so that charity place will only help if they take the pet away? That's nuts! That's not charity it is elitism cruelty!
Doubly so with children. Human children are remarkably resilient, taking them away from the parents that love them is cruel beyond belief. Removal of children from a home should only be done under extreme abusive conditions by the parents, and for no other reason, and just being poor doesn't count as abuse in my book, especially as the official government and wall street economic policy lately has been to utterly ripoff and destroy the middle class in the US for short term globalist race to the bottom labor arbitrage profits.
The pet thing, glad I know that now, I am going to check into that spca thing and if true rank them soundly around the internet. We take care of a boatload of rescue animals (right now have 7 dogs and around a dozen cats) and my income is pretty low, I make well under ten grand a year, and I will never approach spca then if this is the case. I just suck it up and pay for what vet care I need and do without for myself if I have to. For instance the bulk of my fed return this year, I get most back from my income level, is going to spaying/neutering and vaccinations for my newest arrivals here, a coupla puppies someone dumped off and a few cats. Ya, I'd like a new computer, but my responsibility to my pets come before that. Out in the country, pets just show up. I like what I do, all my pets like me back (just got back from a good run in the mud with the pack, we got all slimed, been raining like..cats and dogs lately here, pretty funny really) and also consider this to be my tithing for the most part.
We have energy demand, and energy production, two different things. We can still do a *lot* more to reduce demand and not just fixate on the production part (this is also the main article point). If you had ever been inside a superinsulated home you would know what I am talking about (I have helped build and retrofit a few). It is quite conceivable and has been proven that-for instance- you can take a normal stick frame residential home and drop its energy demands for heating and cooling down to like 10-20% of what they are now, using off the shelf already proven technology, that in the medium and long run has a spiffy return on investment from reduced utility bills. This reduction in demand (along with better built and designed appliances) would greatly help to eliminate the need for all those coal to electricity plants in the first place, we can just shut them down and not have to deal with storing any co2 then, which then also makes the addition of home solar thermal and PV much cheaper, as you don't need as much production to get to what you still need to run the home. This same concept applies to both small houses all the way to large buildings.
An interesting venue to see some of this tech is in the solar decathlon contests that are held. They even design homes that are not only capable of being self powered, but also produce enough extra power to keep an electric vehicle charged up for the daily commute.
The main point is fixating on the production side is what wall street wants because it is big ticket profit central, whereas if we shifted emphasis to energy efficiency it would be a lot cheaper for society as a whole and give much larger and more immediate returns to just about everyone, and there really isn't a whole lot of "new" stuff that needs to be invented or developed to accomplish this. It won't make wall street and those casino banks and the entrenched energy cartels as much money though, so they tend to just "forget" about energy efficiency and push just more energy production. *Most* buildings today are still in the energy hog SUV type of mileage area for their energy demands if you want a car analogy, so a practical solution becomes easier to see once you grok this.
The easiest quickest way to accomplish this would be by the use of credible and large tax credits for energy efficiency retrofits (this would also put a ton of builders back to work), and then additional credits for decentralized energy production like home solar.
".getting the government entirely out of the business of defining "marriage". About time, too."
You are correct sir! The government shouldn't have a thing to do with marriage, straight, gay, polygamy or polyandry, whatever. People's living and social arrangements are their own private business, and normal contracts can be used to address any official and economic issues associated with that. Let the people involved work out what ritual they want to perform if they want one to sanctify a living arrangement according to their personal beliefs, and everything else can be accomplished with a normal signed and witnessed contract. Everything, work it out yourself with your insurance company or whatever. Work it out in advance the "what about the children?" deal, all of it. The government should just drop all official marriage "licenses" as being totally constitutionally illegal and against the letter and spirit of our born with right of freedom of association.
And adopting this stance would *immediately* defuse all the arguments for and agsinst gay marriage, because the federal and state and local governments would no longer be in the position to offer economic benefits for one group over another, when they shouldn't be using tax payers money to do *any* of that at all in the first place.
No more "joint filing" of taxes, no more definitions of some benefits you are magically entitled to because of whom you sleep with, etc, it would go on a strictly individual basis and if you wanted more than that, you would have to work your own contract out with your partner or partners and your employers and insurers and pension plan providers, etc. And THEN, gay and straight folks could agree on it, just get the whole government involvement in marriage OUT, and then no one would have any beef with feeling discriminated against, because it would be back to all individuals are EQUAL.
3% is the total, but that is all sources. 2/3rds is locked up in icecaps, so that leaves one percent. Of that one percent, most is so polluted (very generally and broadly speaking) now it requires treatment and/or filtration to be drinkable or even to be used in agriculture. And demand is rising so fast, that some geopolitical analysts think there will be expansionist wars over access to water (I subscribe to that notion), beyond what we have now.
Clean fresh water is *the* critical natural resource of the 21st century, forget oil, that's down the list now in importance. Work for professional hydrologists is a good bet for young folks looking for a tech and science career. Going by availability of clean water as a source of national resource wealth, Canada would now be the world's wealthiest nation per capita, for the larger nations.
What the AC replied to you looks to be it. I was meaning they-linux devs "they" who are working on FF or seamonkey now- took the code at some point in time, then stopped taking code from mozilla and went on and did their own thing. No tracking, following, shadowing or anything. I guess it is semantics, but the idea of calling icecat a shadow rather than a true fork seems more appropriate and as such doesn't fit what I could consider to be a true fork. Or even better if they just started a new linux/FOSS browser program from scratch that had nothing to do with making a windows or mac version. Sort of like a FOSS variation of what the guy who does iCab does for mac (which is a decent browser project actually), he does *just* mac, nothing else, and has no intention whatsoever of doing a windows or linux version. No dilution or loss of focus in other words from his POV.
Anyway, I would really like to see and then $upport such a project, especially if the browser component was the main driving factor around a new linux kernel based desktop centric (not server or "enterprise") operating system with as much gpl3 as possible to it. Moz and google are just way too microsoft windows focused for my tastes at this point. MS has threatened open source over and over and over again for years, so why they want to keep supporting MS is beyond me, it makes no sense if you have a medium or long range goal. Comes a time you have to fish, cutting bait constantly by making windows better by doing MS job for them will just keep people on windows, and that is what all the website stats say at this point, linux adoption has stagnated on the desktop, because the browser made for windows by moz just encourages people stay on windows instead of looking at a true alternative. Yes, a lot of this is socially political and I admit that, but you either support FOSS as the better idea in all of computer-dom, or you do not. MS is and has been and shows all inclinations to contiue to be a clear and present danger to FOSS, and they have not changed, so why help them *at all*? That is where I am coming from. I would say I have the same exact opinion about OO.org at this point.
Primarily mindset at this point, then if it happened, I would look forward to better code. The originator of FF is a windows user and mozilla concentrates on windows releases. I think microsoft is rich enough to do their own work, and I have never accepted the theory of browser as a 'gateway" for people to adopt open source operating systems, on the contrary, it just goes to keep people on windows, and the linux adoption stats prove that, because it has been years now and you barely can measure any increase of linux adoption, even with firefox..
And frankly,. it got old a long time ago to be reading about some firefox exploit when it turns out to be a windows-firefox exploit, and stuff like that there, they can't even be assed in the headlines or summaries to differentiate, whereas a true different name and product would eliminate that obvious screw up.. Here's our bad meme car analogy. If I hear about a recall on ground pounder trucks, I don't want to have to huint to see if it is a ford, chevy or dodge "ground pounder". Why they can't even use a different name for a different product is beyond me, but they do, and I think it's just lame. Yes, they would all be trucks, and share four wheels and an engine, but that doesn't make them identical just because they are given *the same name*
I run an open source operating system on purpose for both practical and social reasons, I don't "dual boot" to run video games or for any other reason, I don't really want to use or support what I deem to be a very questionable in the ethics department corporation, even one step removed like moz is to MS, and I would therefore *prefer* a decent browser that didn't share space and name and mindset with a microsoft windows program. Dang cooties, I don't even want it touching it. I was going to switch to Konqueror for that reason, until the KDE folks decided they were going to port to windows as well....
I think it is dilution of open source mindshare and emphasis and philosophy, a crutch, an enabling effort that is erroneous in design, and would just prefer a true fork or another decent quality browser option, where the *primary and only* purpose was an open source browser designed and built for an open source operating system, not a redheaded step child effort.
Now this is an *opinion* I have, nothing more, but like I said, I so much believe in that opinion I would gladly pay 10 or 20 bucks a year for it (or pay for a new distro based around a new open source browser), and the whole thread was about mozilla and funding and so on, that is, money. Google is the same way, windows first always, so I have no desire to even try chrome when and if it goes to linux. I want linux (really FOSS in general) first, not third after microsoft and apple, and that won't happen as long as things like mozilla keep making Microsoft products. If there was a credible alternative or a start up effort to go in that direction, I'd switch, simple as that, and also support the effort with a paid subscription. I don't code myself, or I would already be doing just that.
If the linux devs working on firefox were to seriously fork it, and get away from mozilla proper, so that any future releases had *nothing* to do with the windows version, and they renamed it so there was a distinct and clearcut difference when talking about "firefox", I'd pay for the thing yearly, some reasonable sum, say 10 or 20 bucks. I'd like a REAL *quality* open source browser that had nothing to do with a closed source operating system. For me, and probably millions of other people, the internet browser is "the killer app", and as such is worth something and worth support.
....they still could re: aftermarket accessories. A full extended range battery pack that slapped and snapped on the bottom of the case and then just ran a powerplug to the input/charger jack. The same size, it just adds some depth to the whole laptop then. Or heck, make it just half additional battery action and an optical drive, for those notebooks that don't have one. I don't really know what modern laptop batteries weigh, but say it extended the range by 4 or 5x plus gave it an additional drive. They'd sell some I am sure. Sort of like a dock but better. Then folks would have a choice on what they wanted to tote that day without having to buy two full complete machines.
Basically, I just like any kind of hybrids or changeable things like that, dual or triple use. It could be three way, the basic machine is just a good smartphone that fits in your pocket, that could snap into a netbook chassis that gave you a bigger screen and keyboard and maybe some more storage, and then the netbook could have the add on range and drive extender that snaps on the bottom.
..he has a point on what is "too heavy". Laptops just a few years ago where twice as heavy and people put up with it. Now the big complaint is battery run time, which could be easily solved if we just had laptop weight parity with that same few years ago and the manufacturers actually put in a decent big battery. Take one of these 2.5 lb notebook marvels they have now, add a 2.5 lb battery, still 5 lbs, which is just not that heavy.
Those replicated disks sold on street corners and at flea markets are a lot closer to what the official studios and producers should be pricing their legit disks at. If they would have gotten a little less price gougy way back when it became so cheap to stamp out disks, they would have nipped so called piracy in the bud. They weould have made it back on much larger volume sales then. Instead they just fixated at a ridiculously bloated "per unit" price and margin level they pulled out of their collective millionaire pointed haired media bosses asses, and now wonder why sales drop off.
Same with digital downloads, the old allofmp3 prices are a lot closer to what online download prices should be. Everyone on the planet knows what it costs to dupe media on disk or download, real legit prices should be just a little more than that and no more. You make entertainment media be closer to impulse buy pricing levels that actually reflect modern tech replication advances, you'll sell a LOT more, and still make profit, but they waited too long to even think about that. All those decisions on prices are made by multi millionaires living a muilti millionaire lifestyle, they have no idea what 10 or 20 bucks is to regular working class folks, they are clueless, zero frame of reference.
Heck, go ahead and absolutely double street pirate prices, that would still be far cheaper than what the **AA members offer now. 10-20 bucks for a download or a stamped disk is ridiculous price gouging.
Semi car analogy, gas prices. If all the biz news said-example- that a barrel of crude was 50 bucks but the prices at the pump were 20 bucks a gallon, people would know they were being price gouged, and no matter how much the oil producers and refiners tried to spin it with "well, it costs us so much to do this and.." people would know that was complete bullshit.
Same with these stupid media prices. I started buying and paying full retail for music in the *50s* and was a pretty loyal albeit smaller scale consumer all the way to the 90s (when disks took over the format) and it become beyond apparent they were systematically and in a huge fashion price gouging. I stopped, no more new entertainment media at those inflated prices. I voted with my wallet, they get zero from me when they used to get a few hundred a year (like I said, not much, but that doesn't count concerts and going to the movie theater either, and that used to be a little closer to serious money than it is today for that matter).
When I start seeing music CDs at two bucks a disk and brand new movies at three bucks a DVD, I'll start buying brand new again, and not until then. Right now, only marked down severely in the bargain bin to those levels or used at pawn shops and yard sales, etc, that's it. And downloads? Even 99 cents for a few megs of music is a huge rip. It needs to be like around a dime. I don't pirate their stuff, but neither will I pay bloated millionaires fantasy prices either. The personal computer and advanced software and disk duplicators has made production costs, especially for music, a *lot* cheaper than it ever was, but official per unit pricing hasn't kept up with that cost savings.
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..like not going to war based on manufactured alleged intelligence, having accountability and honest audits at the Fed and Treasury, having a more sane and fair monetary and tax policy, letting capitalistic industries fail when they come up with pseudo products that offer nothing and that no one wants much anymore, letting them fail in the marketplace where it belongs instead of putting everyone in hock to cover their gambling debts, reining in our of control bureaucratic edicts that sidestep the normal legislative process, getting the Federal government out of State government's business, having real security instead of creeping big brother-ism fascist policies disguised as security theater and so on...ya, just too weird, no one would ever want that stuff...
It works out about as well as my making similar decisions to not be a thief or crook, to not be a predator on other people, to not lie or cheat, etc. And ya, part of it is to feel good with yourself, to stay honest with yourself. I see it as simple normal ethics, nothing really strange or exotic about it.
I think crooked and corrupt government sucks, so I won't vote for it. Voting is not a very long nor involved process after all, taken as something you only do once a year or two or four, so it is easy enough to just vote the way you really want to and be done with it. As to my life in general, it's OK, I'm fine with myself.
The reality is, there is no compromise with chronic crooks and thieves and liars, they pretty much won't change (certainly not voluntarily,not usually anyway broadly speaking) and voting for them just reinforces their mindset that what they are doing is OK.
In a different field, medicine, with substance abuse and out of control addicts, helping them get a fix is called enabling, and it is usually recommended that people don't do that...because it doesn't work.
If you know someone is a thief and want them to stop being a thief, you don't fence their goods for them and think that will somehow magically change them into honest people. That would be quite illogical and borderline...nuts again. Crazy, stupid and crazy.
It is a very simple concept to grok. And I won't be an enabler of destructive and anti social behavior, which corrupt government can be loosely classed as.
From my POV, I really want C, and equally don't want A or B for various reasons (and I highly suspect most A or B voters feel almost the same but elect to hold their nose and pick A or B and then fall back on the "wishful thinking, this time will be different, lucy will really hold the football for charlie brown *this time*" theory, which seems rather pointless in this day and age given all the verifiable data that historical hindsight provides us now to look at)
It matters naught to me which of A or B gets in, as either will pick my pocket and infringe on some liberty, and between them they pick both pockets and infringe all liberties over time, with the trends always headed towards more thievery and more liberty infringing. (current example, old admin, R, billionaire bailouts for corporate casino gamblers who stiffed each other and millions of innocent "investors" with total made up looney tunes alleged "products", now the new administration, D, the big change! billionaire bailouts for corporate casino gamblers. Both administrations packed with insider casino gamblers, put in charge of the real economy. There's no practical diff I can see.)
Like I said, they, given their criminal priorities, have a facade of some big difference, which is on which pocket to start at, or which liberty to infringe on some list they have, but eventually they'll get around to all of them. So I'll stick with C (or D or E or...) and advocate other folks do the same.
Ya, it sucks rubber donkey dong, obviously dealing with the political soup nazi system we have (to keep with the restaurant analogy o_0 ), but my conscious is clear that I haven't voted for some cretin/political gang who will take not only my loot and freedom, but YOUR loot and freedom (and yours, and yours, and yours, and them folks over there, too), which is just as important to me. Certainly I have my priorities and issues, but chances are they aren't exactly the same as yours, but overall, if we don't look out for each others well being..well...there ya go, we don't. We sink. Buh bye, nice civilization while we had it.
History books are all full of failed empires and civilizations, and they mostly croak from massive greed and the lust for power over other humans, the loss of looking out for your neighbor (even if you and he differ on any number of things), the ceasing of caring for the weaker and more innocent, having megalomaniacs as leaders and criminal gangs trying to pass as official government. Corruption, rot, decay..entropy rules I guess...
How bad is it, how bad can it get? Can't say other than since I have been politically aware and paying some attention (more or less a half century now) it has steadily gone downhill across all the fronts. Not steady, it has spikes of occasional and temporary outbreaks of common sense and honesty and fairness and justice, but it falls under that old saying one step forward, two steps back.
IF we don't do things differently, and get back to the original idea of the individual is the sovereign and government is our employee and not our lord and master and trans national corporations are NOT the government NOR some unelected perpetual class of neo-royal aristocratic rulers (I thought we had that sorted out in the 1700s as a bad idea..) and only are made/kept legal when they follow our social contract of being of benefit to society (the other part of the original corporate charter idea besides "make profits" that the pirates and looters always have collective amnesia over)..then we are screwed. It could and probably will get fairly ugly, history teaches us that as well.
So my bottom line is..I won't vote for them fellers or that sort of system, it is binary for me, yes, no, there is no "maybe, if.." there that has any credible validity.
You won't get an expanded menu until you tell the restaurant owner you aren't buying either the chicken and rice or rice and chicken and stick to it. If you just keep buying one of the two exactly the same selections on the menu, he isn't going to change, no matter how much you ask or beg for a third or fourth or fifth choice.
With voting, you can do this. You have to crack 1% to get to 2%, then crack 2 to get to 3 and so on. We've had examples in the past where third party candidates hit close to 10%, and when that level hit and the high level corrupt goons in the R and D parties got scared, and with the help of the compliant media demonizing or outright ignoring those alternatives and hijacked congress keeping the voting regs tilted in favor of the same two parties, it dropped back down. And the media IS complicit, they only "allow" the two major parties in the so called national debates. The league of women voters dropped sponsorship of the debates over that stance and being forced to acquiesce to some other shenanigans like scripting in advance, they refused to participate any longer and called it a "fraud on the american people". The big corporate media should have had the integrity and balls to do exactly the same at the exact same time, but being mostly controlled tools and way more a propaganda arm of the establishment than being independent journalists, they didn't.
In other words, I categorically reject the notion that casting the ONE vote you have for who you really want is a waste. Maintaining that criminal gang duopoly by spending your one vote-and that is all you have realistically- on it is the only true waste (that or not voting at all) if you really don't want that criminal duopoly to remain in power. I know I have a clear conscious, been voting third or alternate party for decades now, and I can say I don't vote for the status quo of corruption and malfeasance in government as "business as usual".
If you vote for one of those back room and media picked for you political sock puppets. no matter what your reason if it is anything except really wanting that particular doofus...that's it, that is who you voted for and you are affirming their continuance of corruption and malfeasance. It doesn't matter what you think in the back of your mind, what matters is that you personally gave them a signal that what they are doing is perfectly fine. If you don't want to do that, then don't, and it is that simple.
The more people who are not made artificially afraid of that the better. I refuse to be intimidated by this threat of "wasting your vote", because I've been around long enough to clearly see the only major difference with those two criminal gangs is which of your pockets they want to pick first, and which of our born with rights they put at the head of the list to infringe on. I just slap refuse to vote in the affirmative for either of those bogus alleged choices.
If "we all" took your advice and "waited until computers get better" before the joe masses guy bought one, we'd be stuck now back in 486 or earlier days still.
There has to be mass quantities demand for products for the R and D guys to keep going and to develop both the prototypes *and* -and this is important- the manufacturing technology to be able to bring "quantities of scale" into the scene so we have further price drops and quality increases. My PV panels are now 10 years old and still work fine, and I am happy/glad/proud to have been part of the alternate energy solution back then by sticking my wallet where my mouth was and getting some. I'll do it again when it is time to replace those. Same as I have a stack of old computers in my shed that are about useless today, but by me buying them I helped encourage and fund further computer development. Now my personal cash involved in both computers and solar PV is small, but taken as my part of the aggregate consumer demand-it added up to we have some decent advances, and I knew full well back then that the stuff would be getting better, but I chose not to wait for the "other guy".
There's a saying we had back in the 60s that just fits so well in any number of scenarios, "you are part of the problem, or part of the solution". I think de-centralized power that joe sixpack can actually own and pay off, and get away from the energy price fixing cartels that only rent you the infrastructure forever with no way to ever pay them off, is just so spiffy an idea economically and politically and socially (no wars over access to sunshine for instance, as opposed to oil and uranium and associated tech) that I am willing to jump in and be part of the solution and not wait, even though I know it will be "better" later on.
Hmm, just dawned on me one of the ways how I afforded it too (I don't make that much at all), just by rerarranging what parts of my disposable income I had. My venture into solar PV just about exactly coincides in time with my ceasing supporting the **AA media goons by stopping buying their full bloat price marked up "entertainment" copies. You could take that idea and run with it and maybe afford at least some of your power needs -say-give up the satellite or cable Tv bill, make do with free OTA digital signals for the TV and your entertainment, and stick that 50 to 100 bucks a month toward paying off at least a modest 1 kw solar rig, something like that. And if you do the install yourself it saves a lot (except for final circuit box install, that needs a licensed electrician, pay one hour labor, whatever, for that). Replace a circuit or two in your house. There's no need to go whole house or nothing with solar PV, just pick the one or two circuits you REALLY don't want to lose in a power failure, the circuit that drives your furnace blower for example, or your freezer and fridge, or if you go battery bank, the home office so it is a big UPS system, etc, your choice and along those lines.
I really don't. All these wireless telco providers have transfer caps, so what difference does it make if you are looking at the screen on the phone or the laptop or desktop screen? They sell access, plus a certain amount of bytes per your plan per the dollars you give them, so it's the same money! Why are they so worried about tethering then? It seems like the opposite would be true if they are in competition with each other, make your cellphone and plan attractive and easy for tethering and advertise it as such, get more customers, sell more of your easier to use and more featureful phones and more (giga or mega whatever) bytes of transfer.
What is it worth, in terms of dollars and power, to hijack big elections, to wind up owning the government? Now, what is the worth of the entire total electronic voting machine "industry"? Now subtract the second from the first, notice the result... in other words, the real vote hijackers never cared a bit about the potential of losing some penny ante chump change pawn company down the timeline sometime, especially if they were the ones "in charge" of "insuring the integrity of the vote" in the first place...
flatfoot 101, motive, means, opportunity....
If you are good with a router-a woodworking router I mean-you could take the case from your laptop and laminate the outside with some sort of pretty wood veneer, and that leaves whatever RF shielding it has intact. Thinking about it, it is such a small area to laminate you could do it with just hand tools if you are careful, say a razor knife. Make a nice construction paper pattern then lay it out on the veneer and cut away what you need, then glue it on. Anyway, I imagine it has already been done it seems so possible...I will look... here's a link to an example. This guy uses a laser cutter but I don't think that is necessary either if you are just careful enough. In the replies there they make a point of bringing up the heating option, I guess that wouldn't matter a whole lot if your lappy had fans though.
They make custom skins for cellphones, seems a little biz niche there to do it with laptops or perhaps the new netbooks....
Rural area, att/bell south. Lucky to get anything above 28.8 anymore, and they have no plans whatsoever to improve service that I have been able to determine from them. The last place we lived, which was way, WAY the heck more out in the sticks and up multiple dirt roads, was/is served by a smaller community telco and unfortunately for me but good for everyone else there, just when we were moving that little telco ran really decent thick underground copper to EVERY residence in their area that needed an upgrade, so they could offer good quality broadband, etc.
My conclusion is, if it is profitable for those little bitty service providers to do it, the only reason the larger ones don't is because they are complete jerks about things and outright lying about what it costs them.
...wait until you get older and have to try and see that crap on those tiny screens with your old quadfocal eyes and try to type on them teeny designed for Japanese kids keyboards with your stiff fingers, then you *might* get a clue why a spoken way to interact with the web on those devices might be useful. I'd like that on my desktop, let alone some Lilliputian cellphone.
Now, don't get off my lawn, see that mower? Yank that cord and start pushing it and work off some of those cheetos!
Who do battery operated computer devices use just one battery, when there are at least three distinct types of electrical demand that go on? Seems like they should have two or three different types of batteries, and the device is smart enough to switch to the appropriate one quickly. You have high draw and demand, max CPU, your drive spinning, the fans kick on, your wireless is activated, then there is more casual use, then sleep/hibernation. Couldn't different types of batteries address this better than trying a one size fits nothing perfectly scenario?
Same with electric or hybrid cars, they need fast huge release type batteries or ultracaps (or hydraulic pressurized type storage) just to get up to speed from a stop and for braking regneration, then it shoud switch to long haul slow release type batts (possibly much less expensive batts then as well).
A lot of these huge corporations, being international in scope, have no loyalty to the US per se, just a place to hang their corporate hat and suck all they can out of the situation. As such, not only being too large is a general security threat, them having little to no loyalty is as well. If their corporate mindset boils down to "anything to make profit" and that's it, yep, a security threat because they will sell out if the price is right and they think they can get away with it, whatever unethical or criminal act "it" is.
I guess I'd have to disagree. I can't think of a single company, or to put it better, some manufactured item or offered service, that is so necessary that it is the only one that needs to be doing it, and I would include real big ticket items like ships and subs and power plants etc. Monopolies suck, fullstop.
There's room enough for several companies at least even at the most complex levels, heck, I'll include space exploration there as well. If companies aren't allowed to fail from incompetence or a changed business environment in society, what's the point of their capitalism stance then? That's why I would have MUCH preferred if they let those ludicrous casino derivative spewing monster banks go bust, because 99% of their so called "financial products" are complete fantasy BS contracts based on bets on bets on bets and shouldn't be tied to the real economy in any manner whatsoever, they should be firewalled off and allowed to go bust. Let them have fun ripping each other off, but not the general poulation they are now. I think they are thieves and bunco artist fraudsters at extremely scary levels. Jail not bail in other words for those gents. Madoff is a piker compared to most of them, IMO. Frankly, I think the US government now is so corrupt and so much in bed with supporting those wall street criminals and parasites I would support a second secessionary effort by some state or states, just to get away from those lying thieves and blood profits murderers.
As to the pet thing, that sucks! Someone has an injury or loses their job, their economics go down the crapper, they are already bummed out and psychologically damaged, and their loving pet which means a lot to them and that loves them back needs some care so that charity place will only help if they take the pet away? That's nuts! That's not charity it is elitism cruelty!
Doubly so with children. Human children are remarkably resilient, taking them away from the parents that love them is cruel beyond belief. Removal of children from a home should only be done under extreme abusive conditions by the parents, and for no other reason, and just being poor doesn't count as abuse in my book, especially as the official government and wall street economic policy lately has been to utterly ripoff and destroy the middle class in the US for short term globalist race to the bottom labor arbitrage profits.
The pet thing, glad I know that now, I am going to check into that spca thing and if true rank them soundly around the internet. We take care of a boatload of rescue animals (right now have 7 dogs and around a dozen cats) and my income is pretty low, I make well under ten grand a year, and I will never approach spca then if this is the case. I just suck it up and pay for what vet care I need and do without for myself if I have to. For instance the bulk of my fed return this year, I get most back from my income level, is going to spaying/neutering and vaccinations for my newest arrivals here, a coupla puppies someone dumped off and a few cats. Ya, I'd like a new computer, but my responsibility to my pets come before that. Out in the country, pets just show up. I like what I do, all my pets like me back (just got back from a good run in the mud with the pack, we got all slimed, been raining like ..cats and dogs lately here, pretty funny really) and also consider this to be my tithing for the most part.
We have energy demand, and energy production, two different things. We can still do a *lot* more to reduce demand and not just fixate on the production part (this is also the main article point). If you had ever been inside a superinsulated home you would know what I am talking about (I have helped build and retrofit a few). It is quite conceivable and has been proven that-for instance- you can take a normal stick frame residential home and drop its energy demands for heating and cooling down to like 10-20% of what they are now, using off the shelf already proven technology, that in the medium and long run has a spiffy return on investment from reduced utility bills. This reduction in demand (along with better built and designed appliances) would greatly help to eliminate the need for all those coal to electricity plants in the first place, we can just shut them down and not have to deal with storing any co2 then, which then also makes the addition of home solar thermal and PV much cheaper, as you don't need as much production to get to what you still need to run the home. This same concept applies to both small houses all the way to large buildings.
An interesting venue to see some of this tech is in the solar decathlon contests that are held. They even design homes that are not only capable of being self powered, but also produce enough extra power to keep an electric vehicle charged up for the daily commute.
The main point is fixating on the production side is what wall street wants because it is big ticket profit central, whereas if we shifted emphasis to energy efficiency it would be a lot cheaper for society as a whole and give much larger and more immediate returns to just about everyone, and there really isn't a whole lot of "new" stuff that needs to be invented or developed to accomplish this. It won't make wall street and those casino banks and the entrenched energy cartels as much money though, so they tend to just "forget" about energy efficiency and push just more energy production. *Most* buildings today are still in the energy hog SUV type of mileage area for their energy demands if you want a car analogy, so a practical solution becomes easier to see once you grok this.
The easiest quickest way to accomplish this would be by the use of credible and large tax credits for energy efficiency retrofits (this would also put a ton of builders back to work), and then additional credits for decentralized energy production like home solar.
That is the new governmental hybrid business model. Private profits, but public debt socialism for the same guys.
IMO, "too big to fail" should translate into "too big to be allowed to exist in the first place".
".getting the government entirely out of the business of defining "marriage". About time, too."
You are correct sir! The government shouldn't have a thing to do with marriage, straight, gay, polygamy or polyandry, whatever. People's living and social arrangements are their own private business, and normal contracts can be used to address any official and economic issues associated with that. Let the people involved work out what ritual they want to perform if they want one to sanctify a living arrangement according to their personal beliefs, and everything else can be accomplished with a normal signed and witnessed contract. Everything, work it out yourself with your insurance company or whatever. Work it out in advance the "what about the children?" deal, all of it. The government should just drop all official marriage "licenses" as being totally constitutionally illegal and against the letter and spirit of our born with right of freedom of association.
And adopting this stance would *immediately* defuse all the arguments for and agsinst gay marriage, because the federal and state and local governments would no longer be in the position to offer economic benefits for one group over another, when they shouldn't be using tax payers money to do *any* of that at all in the first place.
No more "joint filing" of taxes, no more definitions of some benefits you are magically entitled to because of whom you sleep with, etc, it would go on a strictly individual basis and if you wanted more than that, you would have to work your own contract out with your partner or partners and your employers and insurers and pension plan providers, etc. And THEN, gay and straight folks could agree on it, just get the whole government involvement in marriage OUT, and then no one would have any beef with feeling discriminated against, because it would be back to all individuals are EQUAL.
You can mod a normal back pack to use an additional shoulder bag strap, so you can carry it appropriately as the situation requires.
3% is the total, but that is all sources. 2/3rds is locked up in icecaps, so that leaves one percent. Of that one percent, most is so polluted (very generally and broadly speaking) now it requires treatment and/or filtration to be drinkable or even to be used in agriculture. And demand is rising so fast, that some geopolitical analysts think there will be expansionist wars over access to water (I subscribe to that notion), beyond what we have now.
Clean fresh water is *the* critical natural resource of the 21st century, forget oil, that's down the list now in importance. Work for professional hydrologists is a good bet for young folks looking for a tech and science career. Going by availability of clean water as a source of national resource wealth, Canada would now be the world's wealthiest nation per capita, for the larger nations.
What the AC replied to you looks to be it. I was meaning they-linux devs "they" who are working on FF or seamonkey now- took the code at some point in time, then stopped taking code from mozilla and went on and did their own thing. No tracking, following, shadowing or anything. I guess it is semantics, but the idea of calling icecat a shadow rather than a true fork seems more appropriate and as such doesn't fit what I could consider to be a true fork. Or even better if they just started a new linux/FOSS browser program from scratch that had nothing to do with making a windows or mac version. Sort of like a FOSS variation of what the guy who does iCab does for mac (which is a decent browser project actually), he does *just* mac, nothing else, and has no intention whatsoever of doing a windows or linux version. No dilution or loss of focus in other words from his POV.
Anyway, I would really like to see and then $upport such a project, especially if the browser component was the main driving factor around a new linux kernel based desktop centric (not server or "enterprise") operating system with as much gpl3 as possible to it. Moz and google are just way too microsoft windows focused for my tastes at this point. MS has threatened open source over and over and over again for years, so why they want to keep supporting MS is beyond me, it makes no sense if you have a medium or long range goal. Comes a time you have to fish, cutting bait constantly by making windows better by doing MS job for them will just keep people on windows, and that is what all the website stats say at this point, linux adoption has stagnated on the desktop, because the browser made for windows by moz just encourages people stay on windows instead of looking at a true alternative. Yes, a lot of this is socially political and I admit that, but you either support FOSS as the better idea in all of computer-dom, or you do not. MS is and has been and shows all inclinations to contiue to be a clear and present danger to FOSS, and they have not changed, so why help them *at all*? That is where I am coming from. I would say I have the same exact opinion about OO.org at this point.
..how much of the planet's total liquid water is available for drinking and farming, i.e., is fresh and clean enough?
Primarily mindset at this point, then if it happened, I would look forward to better code. The originator of FF is a windows user and mozilla concentrates on windows releases. I think microsoft is rich enough to do their own work, and I have never accepted the theory of browser as a 'gateway" for people to adopt open source operating systems, on the contrary, it just goes to keep people on windows, and the linux adoption stats prove that, because it has been years now and you barely can measure any increase of linux adoption, even with firefox..
And frankly,. it got old a long time ago to be reading about some firefox exploit when it turns out to be a windows-firefox exploit, and stuff like that there, they can't even be assed in the headlines or summaries to differentiate, whereas a true different name and product would eliminate that obvious screw up.. Here's our bad meme car analogy. If I hear about a recall on ground pounder trucks, I don't want to have to huint to see if it is a ford, chevy or dodge "ground pounder". Why they can't even use a different name for a different product is beyond me, but they do, and I think it's just lame. Yes, they would all be trucks, and share four wheels and an engine, but that doesn't make them identical just because they are given *the same name*
I run an open source operating system on purpose for both practical and social reasons, I don't "dual boot" to run video games or for any other reason, I don't really want to use or support what I deem to be a very questionable in the ethics department corporation, even one step removed like moz is to MS, and I would therefore *prefer* a decent browser that didn't share space and name and mindset with a microsoft windows program. Dang cooties, I don't even want it touching it. I was going to switch to Konqueror for that reason, until the KDE folks decided they were going to port to windows as well....
I think it is dilution of open source mindshare and emphasis and philosophy, a crutch, an enabling effort that is erroneous in design, and would just prefer a true fork or another decent quality browser option, where the *primary and only* purpose was an open source browser designed and built for an open source operating system, not a redheaded step child effort.
Now this is an *opinion* I have, nothing more, but like I said, I so much believe in that opinion I would gladly pay 10 or 20 bucks a year for it (or pay for a new distro based around a new open source browser), and the whole thread was about mozilla and funding and so on, that is, money. Google is the same way, windows first always, so I have no desire to even try chrome when and if it goes to linux. I want linux (really FOSS in general) first, not third after microsoft and apple, and that won't happen as long as things like mozilla keep making Microsoft products. If there was a credible alternative or a start up effort to go in that direction, I'd switch, simple as that, and also support the effort with a paid subscription. I don't code myself, or I would already be doing just that.
If the linux devs working on firefox were to seriously fork it, and get away from mozilla proper, so that any future releases had *nothing* to do with the windows version, and they renamed it so there was a distinct and clearcut difference when talking about "firefox", I'd pay for the thing yearly, some reasonable sum, say 10 or 20 bucks. I'd like a REAL *quality* open source browser that had nothing to do with a closed source operating system. For me, and probably millions of other people, the internet browser is "the killer app", and as such is worth something and worth support.
....they still could re: aftermarket accessories. A full extended range battery pack that slapped and snapped on the bottom of the case and then just ran a powerplug to the input/charger jack. The same size, it just adds some depth to the whole laptop then. Or heck, make it just half additional battery action and an optical drive, for those notebooks that don't have one. I don't really know what modern laptop batteries weigh, but say it extended the range by 4 or 5x plus gave it an additional drive. They'd sell some I am sure. Sort of like a dock but better. Then folks would have a choice on what they wanted to tote that day without having to buy two full complete machines.
Basically, I just like any kind of hybrids or changeable things like that, dual or triple use. It could be three way, the basic machine is just a good smartphone that fits in your pocket, that could snap into a netbook chassis that gave you a bigger screen and keyboard and maybe some more storage, and then the netbook could have the add on range and drive extender that snaps on the bottom.
..he has a point on what is "too heavy". Laptops just a few years ago where twice as heavy and people put up with it. Now the big complaint is battery run time, which could be easily solved if we just had laptop weight parity with that same few years ago and the manufacturers actually put in a decent big battery. Take one of these 2.5 lb notebook marvels they have now, add a 2.5 lb battery, still 5 lbs, which is just not that heavy.
Those replicated disks sold on street corners and at flea markets are a lot closer to what the official studios and producers should be pricing their legit disks at. If they would have gotten a little less price gougy way back when it became so cheap to stamp out disks, they would have nipped so called piracy in the bud. They weould have made it back on much larger volume sales then. Instead they just fixated at a ridiculously bloated "per unit" price and margin level they pulled out of their collective millionaire pointed haired media bosses asses, and now wonder why sales drop off.
Same with digital downloads, the old allofmp3 prices are a lot closer to what online download prices should be. Everyone on the planet knows what it costs to dupe media on disk or download, real legit prices should be just a little more than that and no more. You make entertainment media be closer to impulse buy pricing levels that actually reflect modern tech replication advances, you'll sell a LOT more, and still make profit, but they waited too long to even think about that. All those decisions on prices are made by multi millionaires living a muilti millionaire lifestyle, they have no idea what 10 or 20 bucks is to regular working class folks, they are clueless, zero frame of reference.
Heck, go ahead and absolutely double street pirate prices, that would still be far cheaper than what the **AA members offer now. 10-20 bucks for a download or a stamped disk is ridiculous price gouging.
Semi car analogy, gas prices. If all the biz news said-example- that a barrel of crude was 50 bucks but the prices at the pump were 20 bucks a gallon, people would know they were being price gouged, and no matter how much the oil producers and refiners tried to spin it with "well, it costs us so much to do this and.." people would know that was complete bullshit.
Same with these stupid media prices. I started buying and paying full retail for music in the *50s* and was a pretty loyal albeit smaller scale consumer all the way to the 90s (when disks took over the format) and it become beyond apparent they were systematically and in a huge fashion price gouging. I stopped, no more new entertainment media at those inflated prices. I voted with my wallet, they get zero from me when they used to get a few hundred a year (like I said, not much, but that doesn't count concerts and going to the movie theater either, and that used to be a little closer to serious money than it is today for that matter).
When I start seeing music CDs at two bucks a disk and brand new movies at three bucks a DVD, I'll start buying brand new again, and not until then. Right now, only marked down severely in the bargain bin to those levels or used at pawn shops and yard sales, etc, that's it. And downloads? Even 99 cents for a few megs of music is a huge rip. It needs to be like around a dime. I don't pirate their stuff, but neither will I pay bloated millionaires fantasy prices either. The personal computer and advanced software and disk duplicators has made production costs, especially for music, a *lot* cheaper than it ever was, but official per unit pricing hasn't kept up with that cost savings.