Well...dang straight man, I feel the same way. Really is disappointing when you realise that the real small stuff is just out of reach anymore, glasses or no glasses. I still don't throw away much stuff though, hang onto it for "parts". It's a habit that is hard to shake.
It doesn't matter really, for the most part stuff now is mostly throw away junk. Not all, but most.
First application listed in the menu is add/remove software.The first one. There's just no way to make it much easier than that. Linspire/Freespire has click-n-run, again, pretty easy. Other major distros are similar, and it doesn't matter which package application manager scheme they use, because the newbie user will be using the one that is applicable to the OS distro that is on the machine sitting in front of him or her, they don't have to figure out whether to use a.deb or an RPM or a tarball whatever, they only will see what is there to choose from, and with all major distros having thousands of applications, the excuses are dropping down to a few propietary applications that are more commonly used in a workplace environment where professional people guide their users, and then some games, and frankly, I no longer see games as being much of an issue with the advanced consoles out there.
I'm still a CLI doofus, and it doesn't seem to matter with me running linux at all, it isn't much of an issue at all. I run stuff from cli, once in awhile, but I don't *have to*. Once a person is used to mousing around, really, desktop linux is no big deal at all, and if they are a complete raw noob to computers at all, mac, windows, linux are all more similar than not for any useability bragging rights, it's up to the new user how intutitive they are then coordinating an icon and running a mouse and you just can't overcome that without personal handholding and/or a lot of experimentation on the users part. some people are just not smooth enough with ANY operating system to use it unattended right off the bat, but most folks could get going pretty easily with any of them, at least to do some basic common tasks.
I imagine they thought of it, just can't do it from legal reasons, their lawyers might think it might be construed as price fixing for example. In some areas where it has been legal, when they get no direct money from their efforts, insurance companies have lobbied together for political change in both their economic favor and their customers, seatbelt laws for a huge example. I can easily remember when zero cars came with seatbelts, and it sure wasn't the car companies pushing for them, same as they hates CAFE standards and so on..
My idea for medical cure bounties is just a variation on that and as applied to medicine. Another reason "why not?" so far is the entire concept of bounties is still relatively rare in our economy. The closest on any large scale that we have is the contracted bid system, but that is still arranged up-front before any work is started, then the work proceeds knowing the bid winner will get paid so it isn't exactly the same. A bounty system means only the very best as in intelligence and skills would get paid, and they would get paid handsomely. That gives an incredible inducement to do a very good job, which would lead to the best possible solutions, and also eliminates a lot of the busywork wannabes who know they don't have a clue so won't even try. A bounty system rewards true productivity and innovation, and not just time clock punching and half assed work and relying on these small patent variations and near vendor lockin for max profits.
Anyway, this is probably maybe the sixth or seventh time I have thrown this thought-meme out to the world at large on various forums going back numerous years. It ain't much but I hope eventually it might gain some traction as someone might see it is a viable alternative to how things are being done now. You never know, on slashdot we have billionaires to paupers, politicians to CEOs to office drones to grunt workers and everyone in between. The whole idea of commenting on an issue on webforums is to share thoughts-so I just did. That's me thoughts on how to make a part of the system better.
As to why insurance companies don't do this or that with crime, etc, they DO. I was an insurance agent for a year before and saw a lot of what goes on, and just being a normal american am aware of a lot of issues. Insurance companies will cut you financial slack for living in safer neighborhoods, following sane home protection practices, making sure your property is kept in good repair, making sure your ride is in good repai and that you drive responsibily, etc, etc. the financial carrot is there, really, they wouldn't care if their gross went down, as long as they could keep dropping their outlay from claims, because that increases their bottom line *net* which is where it is at.Here's another example, many insurance companies are now either dropping hurricane coveage or vastly increasing rates as much as possible, because governments have failed to mandate better construction techniques or better infrastructure protection, nor have individuals done enough to protect what they have, so from their POV, why should they, unless you want to pay a premium equal to the worth of the object in question or what your debt load is compared to income yearly, sure, they'll cover that because it's a sucker bet and they lose nothing, worst case break even. They offer guidelines, but it is up to local governments to implement them. They don't,the big wind comes by, stuff that should not be destroyed if it was built better gets destroyed, too bad on having coverage again, blame your local government and your mortgage lender for *not thinking* hard enough on what they "approve". Fire the mayor and inspectors, get new ones who can think and act, switch to a bank that is prepared to tell you no if your home is built like crap. Sure, they play the odds and do studies and believe me, it is never in their interest to have to pay a claim, so to try and make that as much reality as possible, they lobby pretty hard for things of the safety nature.
The insurance companies should pool some cash and offer bounties for cures. Not treatments-cures. Sort of medical x-prizes. The developers get the loot, the insurance companies get to own the process and then license it for generic and universal production at the lowest cost. The smart guys get paid and have an inducement to be smart, the consumers get the best for the least, the insurance companies reduce risk.
My newest rescue dog (a little white foxy looking puppy, very mixed breed, I call her a fritz because she looks like a weiner dog with a spitz head, but she's all white so you tell me what cross she is or what breed because I don't know), plays catch with herself! She tosses chestnuts and sticks and pinecones, etc, up in the air, then runs and catches them. The other dogs stand around and watch. Pretty dang funny first time I saw it. And what's weird is she won't play catch with me, the other dogs do, she'll only play catch with herself. I've seen a couple other dogs do that (with small objects or small furry creatures they have caught like mice), but not for a long time now.
As to cooperate play like you said with the orcas, nope, can't say as I have seen anything to that level, but pretty close. I have seen a small pod of dolphins come in real close to the shore as close as they could get when a friend and I were playing latin drums on the beach and our girlfriends were dancing (our old hippie street musician dodge). They came in and just swam in a pattern,basically a fast figure 8, looked to me like some sort of on-purpose deal, for as long as we played, then they split. Pretty amazing to see really. We had tourists slack jawed watching them (in between eyeing the girls, natch). That is probably the closest I have seen to that sort of behavior.
you left out three biggees (and many mid levels), gentoo, knoppix and mandrake in that list, if you are going by enthusiastic posts on the intartubes over the past several years.
As I stated, the ballot requirements differ greatly state to state and some places it is quite difficult and expensive to get on the ballot Here, thou mayest educate thyself, several to choose from
Ballot access differs state to state widely, and in no state do either the D or R party have to pay a plugged nickle or gather signatures to be included, whereas all third parties have to jump various hoops. Now I am not sure which constitution you read, but mine has no mention whatsoever of two for-profit organizations that are allowed to hijack and own the government like they do now. No place does it say we are supposed to have a locked down gerry mandered carved in stone "two party system" or racket as I prefer real words.
It is a power sharing jobs racket..that's it. And if you doubt me at all how crooked and corrupt and bogus it is, just remember,and you can go over and argue with these folks, it was the League of Women Voters who sponsored the national debates for generations, and then *quit* doing that because they said it was unfair what the Ds and Rs did to the requirements after Perot scared the shit out of the Ds and Rs with his populist showing. Heck, they wouldn't even let some third party candidates into the audience when they had legitimate tickets, let alone on the rostrum, had them "detained" by the bulls.
Screw that, tha't s obvious police state action, along with their "free-speech zones" that both parties used to stifle and minimize dissent.
Sorry, I'll repeat my statement-you will see no cleaning up of government or a return to government of and for the people until the D and R gangs are out, destroyed, smashed, gone, exiled, run out of town on a rail, the leaders arrested and impeached for serious crimes and malfeasance in office, and the political process yanked back to the people. Just the entire concept of full time career politicians is bogus.
Both parties have said they would clean up their act as long as I can remember, over and over and over again, and neither has. There is no differing of the levels of crime and corruption today then there as in the 60s. We had a full d president and combined D legislature back then, and lookee here at the history books, a big fat war for profit based on outright lies.
Not seeing any difference whatsoever, no matter the so called "balance of power" in the branches or anything. There's a globalist party with two slightly different wings, both out to pick your pocket and strip your rights in favor pf themselves and someone else. If one party doesn't want to rip you off and give your loot to some big corporation, the other wants to do it for illegal aliens or the three eyed flying toad. if one party doesn't want to strip you of your self protection tools, the other one wants to tap your phone and read your mail and make you smile for the street corner big brother camera. And so on, I could run a huge list right now. Up and down and sideways with the huge list of *crap* from those goons. ENOUGH! I do NOT trust organizational liars any longer, it is beyond ludicrous to think it is going to change with the way the system is setup now and with the folks in power.
Charlie Brown-football-Lucy. That's it in a nutshell. Charlie Brown is an idiot if he keeps falling for Lucy's promise to hold the ball nice.
Comes a time one has to call it like it is in reality. I used to think, for around 25 years or so before I had to sit down and start from scratch thinking about it and be honest with myself based on all the empiricial data-I used to think it was possible to try and patch-up the system or at least one of those parties, now I think for the most part all it is is a crooked power sharing jobs program, a big fat mafia like organization, and they use their grassroots activists as the aforementioned "useful idiots" and throw those phony elections as political drama to keep the rubes amused and faked out that there is an honest political process. Others may still think it is possible to "reform" it, but I don't from the longer range perspective. If I thought it was possible, I am certainly not shy at all and would say so,and I would be advocating and working towards something quite different, but I just don't see it as even being remotely possible at this time.
The "religious right" doesn't run the R party, the globalist businessmen do. They just use the RR for votes. IMO, pretty similar to how the D party has faked out and used a lot of the Union vote over the decades. The political phrase used-I didn't invent the term but it fits-is "useful idiots".
I've been in politics a long time, I started in the 64 election, and I tell you, there is no magical formula using any combination of D party congress and prez or, R party congress and prez, or combination of the two, which will result in anything but more of the same as you see today. The only major difference with those two parties is which hand they use to pick your pocket with, leaving the other hand free to slap you acrossd te face when it comes to which born-with rights they want to infringe. The system as it stands now is *broken*, hideously and completely broken, corrupt, out of control, and the crime cartel has rigged the system to prevent existing third parties from getting much notice, getting on ballots, getting into so called debates, and so on. That's why I think the stealth coup is a workable solution, at least as it comes to the press and mindshare and instilling hope, etc and a renewed and EFFECTIVE activism.
Both parties still contain very small numbers of more or less sort of honest and thinking people, but they are in the minority, get little to no press, and they have the population just completely faked out that to do anything but support either wing of the power sharing and corrupt political cartel is somehow a wasted vote and wasted action. I disagree from the benefit of the long view.
Bad car analogy time. I have heard the refrain "work from within" (I have been in both parties actually, same deal) and so on for decades now-and it just slap doesn't work and is not going to work. I am not going to keep buying a pinto or a yugo from those used political car salesman, and just keep back and forth trying this model or that model of the pinto or yugo. All they do is keep spray painting different colors on the political car and tell me that is "new and improved this time! Trust us!"
personally, I won't vote D or R, but I might make an exception for Ron Paul, but he has said he doesn't want to.
My sort of political wish list is a stealth third party coup, where a lot of already elected folks (fed/state/local) who are Constitutionally bent and 100% pro *middle* class in outlook all decide one day to withdraw from their various parties and form a new centrist/populist/nationalist party, then run their own candidate for prez and shake things up. And I don't mean they just join an existing third party, but start one from scratch with guys already in office.
People didn't just dump their black and whites then, they just got moved out of the living room to another room and the color set was moved in their place. The old black and whites didn't get dumped until they got broken beyond reasonable repair, and every small town had at least one TV repair guy who was busy all the time. I am generally speaking, but that is how it went down for the most part.
Now today, most everything electronic is not designed to be repaired, just tossed, a lot of times tossed just because there are new features, even though it isn't broken yet. Totally different culture and business model now. Like how many guys here have a stack of old still working computers but for the most part aren't used? And cellphones? Maybe being geeks we hang onto (some of) them, but most people just chuck stuff out now while it is still working, merely because it is a few years old and now obsolete. either that or the things really don't even last much more than a few years and one cheap dohickey breaks on them and it is neither cost effective nor very easy to fix them.
And I am not sure what you mean by the signal, I have a couple analog black and white portable TVs now (a sony watchman and a 5" screen 12 VDC camping TV) that still work fine, they just don't display color.
The web is a huge network, a network of networks, mostly accessed by lower powered "terminals" connecting to higher powered servers to "do stuff". Now we can quibble over the precise exact definition of what a terminal is, what constitutes a terminal or not hardware-wise, but the fact remains this is how they are used, as net-terminals, so let's call them that. The number one use of computers by joe and josephine six pack, directly, is to access the internet, and once there, what is online on the remote servers is then the most important thing to them. The look at web pages, use email and chat/IM primarily. You need the network to do that stuff. The internet browser is by far the "killer app" for those net-terminal computers. Games run entirely on the local machine are probably a distant number 2.
I'd say they are a lot more right than wrong on what they saw in 96.
I wouldn't even bother trying, not in 2006, becase enough of it is out there now that it isn't totally unknown nor unused. Those businesses (and bosses and shareholders and the boards) that grok how open source works and take advantage of it will get a competitive business advantage in the long run and will be successful. The ones that don't will wonder why and look around and see for themselves, or hear about it at the bar or on the golf links, etc. Joe rich boss A to rich boss B at the golf course after a pitcher of margaritas -> "Man, we were able to skip an entire upgrade cycle with that expensive belchfire software by going to this stack of what those geeks we keep down in the dungeons call "open source" shit. We saved a millyun clams!" "Get outta here!" "Nope, works great, what a pleasure to tell them belchfire sales weasels to go take a hike!"
Along those lines anyway.
Anyway, ya'all in IT can rassle it out. I do farming and gardening and I do "open source" seeds as opposed to "closed source, propietary" seeds. I can save my seeds legally and effectively every year, do my own tweaking and customizing by keeping only the best open pollinated stuff I grow so that every season it gets better, for my particular needs. Some doods like that expensive hybrid action and GM and whatnot, go drop serious folding money every year, I have tried them..meh, not seeing any huge diff at all (sometimes it is even suckier than my open pollinated frankly) and I certainly save a bundle by doing my own seeds for the most part. We who do that with seeds have a rich sharing culture that goes way, way back well before computers and software were even invented, seems to work out just fine.
This is how I finally bingoed to what FLOSS was all about. I had read the words but still didn't get it, I mean I was already using Linux and still didn't get it. But I thought of an analogy. FLOSS is like the olden days community barn raisings. Individually, it was pretty expensive and very difficult for one guy to build his own barn, collectively, members of the community go over on the weekend and help each other out, each contributing the tools and expertise they were the best at, eventually they all have very nice barns, then they can all go about the business of being farmers, were they made their livings at.
I hope so! Tell ya, with the aging of the population that is another untapped market. Cellphones seem to be targeted at the still young,i.e., those without stiff fingers and with still decent eyesight. It's like they are totally ignoring the over 50 crowd, and that demographic has a lot of cash to drop and they like talking on the phone same as anyone.
...if you as a consumer would indicate to the vendors that long range battery life is more important than over-all laptop or cellphone lightness. Are you willing to carry an extra pound or two in weight with your laptop? You can have (potentially) a bigger battery, that might be made better-more rugged-so that it is safer plus has good range. Consumers demand the lightest though (I call it the wimpification of society factor), so the vendors are stuck trying to accomodate that. Let the vendors know, starting at the local retail store and on up, tell them you want better batteries, even though it might be heavier. They won't change unless consumers change, end of story. 3 lb laptop with exploding batteries and no hang time, or maybe a 5 lb laptop that actually works and runs all day and doesn't catch fire. Now, maybe it's just me, but I would prefer the 5 lb model (whatever, units used for demonstration purposes only).
Now I have a beef with the cellphones, with the constantly shrinking size, last two stores I went into had no cell phones that to me are large enough to be useful. I don't want a tiny screen and buttons so small you mash three of them at once..but..that's all I am seeing until you get into the ridiculous price class range of PDAs, and now even those (smartphones) are too small. I'd swap 90% of the non phone call making functions in the phone if it was just a larger and to me a more practical phone. The couple I have now I will hang on to as long as possible because they are still moderately useful, but looking at the trends it looks like they want to embed cellphones into a tooth cavity or something pretty soon. I don't know what Lilliputians they use to test drive these new phones, but they have to be three foot tall max with fingers as big as toothpicks and eyes sharp as eagles.
Let's look at it from a tech standpoint, and a logic standpoint. From a tech standpoint, closed source means you have just signed up for having someone keep their hands on your wallet forever, and have turned over long term control of your data to some for-profit vendor who can hold you up for more money down the road, and should they go out of business, you are then screwed as your application gets less and less useful, but your data stays locked in their format and system. Security issues? Too bad, now you have to run your business *plus* take on the burden of running the business of the now out of business closed source software vendor-what a deal! Functionality issues? Too bad, you can't do anything about it, legally anyway, plus see the preceding scenario.
From a logic viewpoint, this is a smooth move-or not. I say not, YMMV. Call it politics, I call it longer range strategic thinking and business planning.
From a financial viewpoint, a perpetual expense with no way to keep costs under control-or not. I believe the slang term used is extortion with the closed source guys. "We can't move our data unless we use their product, which keeps going up in price!!!" "We can't get to our records, the company quit making that software, their last version is full of security holes now, but we need some our machines to be networked and....this sucks!" See?
From a public benefit viewpoint, using tax monies to do this-is this a good deal for the tax payer-or not. I say-not. Looks like a good deal only for the software purchasing decision maker in company x or government y who walks away with the bag of untraceable cash and for the vendor who has created what is called an artificial scarcity business model in his particular niche.
Data centers need to figure out a way to use the "waste" heat and turn it back into something useful, namely electricity. The problem is they generate a lot of heat, but it isn't hot enough, which seems screwy but for co generation you want as hot as possible. So the tech that needs to be developed (along with the obvious not generating so much waste heat through efficiency gains), is to find better ways to accumulate/move and use the low temp stuff they do have lots of. There are some alternative energy projects out there doing that with solar thermal to stirling engines for example.
Agriculture is one of the more intensively computerised industries out there right now. I am in agriculture and we use computers all over. In the house, in the buildings, in the equipment, and having a lot of it net enabled is a big help. I mean there is an A to Z list of where computers are useful and are being used in everything from the backyard garden to the highest levels of commercial production. There's some pretty darn neat stuff too, for example, we just bought a few truckloads of corn for our beefers. The guys we get it from use an autonomous tractor to work their fields. That's right, no humans drive the thing, GPS and a computer does it once the field is surveyed once to define the limits and shape (by driving the perimeter once), a computer analyses it and determines the most efficient planting and harvesting pattern, and then goes and does it with little human intervention. Where we live part of the operation is poultry and the houses are heavily computerised, everything, temperature, feeding, watering, electricity supply for all of that, all mostly automated now, and net enabled so it can be remotely monitored and trouble-shot if needs be.
If I was joe farmer in the developing world, I would want at least one computer and net access, for the weather, looking up parts and suppliers, monitoring the markets, learning about new techniques and improving technology, etc, etc. All good stuff and useful. Heck, I use the net just to look up weeds to see what they are sometimes, or to look up more exotic seeds to try for instance, or to look at new breeds of animals, etc. I've ordered a lot of old weird parts for machinery online, because that is a lot more efficient than driving around dealer to dealer. I use the net all the time for stuff like that.
...when it comes to heinous pain and misery when it comes to the wars started by and run for the profit of the top 1%. If you want to call that a tax that is, they are taxed the most in what really matters.
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Well...dang straight man, I feel the same way. Really is disappointing when you realise that the real small stuff is just out of reach anymore, glasses or no glasses. I still don't throw away much stuff though, hang onto it for "parts". It's a habit that is hard to shake.
It doesn't matter really, for the most part stuff now is mostly throw away junk. Not all, but most.
First application listed in the menu is add/remove software.The first one. There's just no way to make it much easier than that. Linspire/Freespire has click-n-run, again, pretty easy. Other major distros are similar, and it doesn't matter which package application manager scheme they use, because the newbie user will be using the one that is applicable to the OS distro that is on the machine sitting in front of him or her, they don't have to figure out whether to use a .deb or an RPM or a tarball whatever, they only will see what is there to choose from, and with all major distros having thousands of applications, the excuses are dropping down to a few propietary applications that are more commonly used in a workplace environment where professional people guide their users, and then some games, and frankly, I no longer see games as being much of an issue with the advanced consoles out there.
I'm still a CLI doofus, and it doesn't seem to matter with me running linux at all, it isn't much of an issue at all. I run stuff from cli, once in awhile, but I don't *have to*. Once a person is used to mousing around, really, desktop linux is no big deal at all, and if they are a complete raw noob to computers at all, mac, windows, linux are all more similar than not for any useability bragging rights, it's up to the new user how intutitive they are then coordinating an icon and running a mouse and you just can't overcome that without personal handholding and/or a lot of experimentation on the users part. some people are just not smooth enough with ANY operating system to use it unattended right off the bat, but most folks could get going pretty easily with any of them, at least to do some basic common tasks.
I imagine they thought of it, just can't do it from legal reasons, their lawyers might think it might be construed as price fixing for example. In some areas where it has been legal, when they get no direct money from their efforts, insurance companies have lobbied together for political change in both their economic favor and their customers, seatbelt laws for a huge example. I can easily remember when zero cars came with seatbelts, and it sure wasn't the car companies pushing for them, same as they hates CAFE standards and so on..
My idea for medical cure bounties is just a variation on that and as applied to medicine. Another reason "why not?" so far is the entire concept of bounties is still relatively rare in our economy. The closest on any large scale that we have is the contracted bid system, but that is still arranged up-front before any work is started, then the work proceeds knowing the bid winner will get paid so it isn't exactly the same. A bounty system means only the very best as in intelligence and skills would get paid, and they would get paid handsomely. That gives an incredible inducement to do a very good job, which would lead to the best possible solutions, and also eliminates a lot of the busywork wannabes who know they don't have a clue so won't even try. A bounty system rewards true productivity and innovation, and not just time clock punching and half assed work and relying on these small patent variations and near vendor lockin for max profits.
Anyway, this is probably maybe the sixth or seventh time I have thrown this thought-meme out to the world at large on various forums going back numerous years. It ain't much but I hope eventually it might gain some traction as someone might see it is a viable alternative to how things are being done now. You never know, on slashdot we have billionaires to paupers, politicians to CEOs to office drones to grunt workers and everyone in between. The whole idea of commenting on an issue on webforums is to share thoughts-so I just did. That's me thoughts on how to make a part of the system better.
As to why insurance companies don't do this or that with crime, etc, they DO. I was an insurance agent for a year before and saw a lot of what goes on, and just being a normal american am aware of a lot of issues. Insurance companies will cut you financial slack for living in safer neighborhoods, following sane home protection practices, making sure your property is kept in good repair, making sure your ride is in good repai and that you drive responsibily, etc, etc. the financial carrot is there, really, they wouldn't care if their gross went down, as long as they could keep dropping their outlay from claims, because that increases their bottom line *net* which is where it is at.Here's another example, many insurance companies are now either dropping hurricane coveage or vastly increasing rates as much as possible, because governments have failed to mandate better construction techniques or better infrastructure protection, nor have individuals done enough to protect what they have, so from their POV, why should they, unless you want to pay a premium equal to the worth of the object in question or what your debt load is compared to income yearly, sure, they'll cover that because it's a sucker bet and they lose nothing, worst case break even. They offer guidelines, but it is up to local governments to implement them. They don't,the big wind comes by, stuff that should not be destroyed if it was built better gets destroyed, too bad on having coverage again, blame your local government and your mortgage lender for *not thinking* hard enough on what they "approve". Fire the mayor and inspectors, get new ones who can think and act, switch to a bank that is prepared to tell you no if your home is built like crap. Sure, they play the odds and do studies and believe me, it is never in their interest to have to pay a claim, so to try and make that as much reality as possible, they lobby pretty hard for things of the safety nature.
The insurance companies should pool some cash and offer bounties for cures. Not treatments-cures. Sort of medical x-prizes. The developers get the loot, the insurance companies get to own the process and then license it for generic and universal production at the lowest cost. The smart guys get paid and have an inducement to be smart, the consumers get the best for the least, the insurance companies reduce risk.
My newest rescue dog (a little white foxy looking puppy, very mixed breed, I call her a fritz because she looks like a weiner dog with a spitz head, but she's all white so you tell me what cross she is or what breed because I don't know), plays catch with herself! She tosses chestnuts and sticks and pinecones, etc, up in the air, then runs and catches them. The other dogs stand around and watch. Pretty dang funny first time I saw it. And what's weird is she won't play catch with me, the other dogs do, she'll only play catch with herself. I've seen a couple other dogs do that (with small objects or small furry creatures they have caught like mice), but not for a long time now.
As to cooperate play like you said with the orcas, nope, can't say as I have seen anything to that level, but pretty close. I have seen a small pod of dolphins come in real close to the shore as close as they could get when a friend and I were playing latin drums on the beach and our girlfriends were dancing (our old hippie street musician dodge). They came in and just swam in a pattern,basically a fast figure 8, looked to me like some sort of on-purpose deal, for as long as we played, then they split. Pretty amazing to see really. We had tourists slack jawed watching them (in between eyeing the girls, natch). That is probably the closest I have seen to that sort of behavior.
you left out three biggees (and many mid levels), gentoo, knoppix and mandrake in that list, if you are going by enthusiastic posts on the intartubes over the past several years.
As I stated, the ballot requirements differ greatly state to state and some places it is quite difficult and expensive to get on the ballot
h ird+parties&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Here, thou mayest educate thyself, several to choose from
http://www.google.com/search?q=ballot+access%2C+t
Ballot access differs state to state widely, and in no state do either the D or R party have to pay a plugged nickle or gather signatures to be included, whereas all third parties have to jump various hoops. Now I am not sure which constitution you read, but mine has no mention whatsoever of two for-profit organizations that are allowed to hijack and own the government like they do now. No place does it say we are supposed to have a locked down gerry mandered carved in stone "two party system" or racket as I prefer real words.
It is a power sharing jobs racket..that's it. And if you doubt me at all how crooked and corrupt and bogus it is, just remember,and you can go over and argue with these folks, it was the League of Women Voters who sponsored the national debates for generations, and then *quit* doing that because they said it was unfair what the Ds and Rs did to the requirements after Perot scared the shit out of the Ds and Rs with his populist showing. Heck, they wouldn't even let some third party candidates into the audience when they had legitimate tickets, let alone on the rostrum, had them "detained" by the bulls.
Screw that, tha't s obvious police state action, along with their "free-speech zones" that both parties used to stifle and minimize dissent.
Sorry, I'll repeat my statement-you will see no cleaning up of government or a return to government of and for the people until the D and R gangs are out, destroyed, smashed, gone, exiled, run out of town on a rail, the leaders arrested and impeached for serious crimes and malfeasance in office, and the political process yanked back to the people. Just the entire concept of full time career politicians is bogus.
Both parties have said they would clean up their act as long as I can remember, over and over and over again, and neither has. There is no differing of the levels of crime and corruption today then there as in the 60s. We had a full d president and combined D legislature back then, and lookee here at the history books, a big fat war for profit based on outright lies.
Not seeing any difference whatsoever, no matter the so called "balance of power" in the branches or anything. There's a globalist party with two slightly different wings, both out to pick your pocket and strip your rights in favor pf themselves and someone else. If one party doesn't want to rip you off and give your loot to some big corporation, the other wants to do it for illegal aliens or the three eyed flying toad. if one party doesn't want to strip you of your self protection tools, the other one wants to tap your phone and read your mail and make you smile for the street corner big brother camera. And so on, I could run a huge list right now. Up and down and sideways with the huge list of *crap* from those goons. ENOUGH! I do NOT trust organizational liars any longer, it is beyond ludicrous to think it is going to change with the way the system is setup now and with the folks in power.
Charlie Brown-football-Lucy. That's it in a nutshell. Charlie Brown is an idiot if he keeps falling for Lucy's promise to hold the ball nice.
Comes a time one has to call it like it is in reality. I used to think, for around 25 years or so before I had to sit down and start from scratch thinking about it and be honest with myself based on all the empiricial data-I used to think it was possible to try and patch-up the system or at least one of those parties, now I think for the most part all it is is a crooked power sharing jobs program, a big fat mafia like organization, and they use their grassroots activists as the aforementioned "useful idiots" and throw those phony elections as political drama to keep the rubes amused and faked out that there is an honest political process. Others may still think it is possible to "reform" it, but I don't from the longer range perspective. If I thought it was possible, I am certainly not shy at all and would say so,and I would be advocating and working towards something quite different, but I just don't see it as even being remotely possible at this time.
The "religious right" doesn't run the R party, the globalist businessmen do. They just use the RR for votes. IMO, pretty similar to how the D party has faked out and used a lot of the Union vote over the decades. The political phrase used-I didn't invent the term but it fits-is "useful idiots".
I've been in politics a long time, I started in the 64 election, and I tell you, there is no magical formula using any combination of D party congress and prez or, R party congress and prez, or combination of the two, which will result in anything but more of the same as you see today. The only major difference with those two parties is which hand they use to pick your pocket with, leaving the other hand free to slap you acrossd te face when it comes to which born-with rights they want to infringe. The system as it stands now is *broken*, hideously and completely broken, corrupt, out of control, and the crime cartel has rigged the system to prevent existing third parties from getting much notice, getting on ballots, getting into so called debates, and so on. That's why I think the stealth coup is a workable solution, at least as it comes to the press and mindshare and instilling hope, etc and a renewed and EFFECTIVE activism.
Both parties still contain very small numbers of more or less sort of honest and thinking people, but they are in the minority, get little to no press, and they have the population just completely faked out that to do anything but support either wing of the power sharing and corrupt political cartel is somehow a wasted vote and wasted action. I disagree from the benefit of the long view.
Bad car analogy time. I have heard the refrain "work from within" (I have been in both parties actually, same deal) and so on for decades now-and it just slap doesn't work and is not going to work. I am not going to keep buying a pinto or a yugo from those used political car salesman, and just keep back and forth trying this model or that model of the pinto or yugo. All they do is keep spray painting different colors on the political car and tell me that is "new and improved this time! Trust us!"
Bull and hockey. We need plan B or C now.
...this guy has announced
http://www.kucinich.us/
personally, I won't vote D or R, but I might make an exception for Ron Paul, but he has said he doesn't want to.
My sort of political wish list is a stealth third party coup, where a lot of already elected folks (fed/state/local) who are Constitutionally bent and 100% pro *middle* class in outlook all decide one day to withdraw from their various parties and form a new centrist/populist/nationalist party, then run their own candidate for prez and shake things up. And I don't mean they just join an existing third party, but start one from scratch with guys already in office.
He posted an update on this last night at Technocrat
http://technocrat.net/d/2006/12/15/12273
People didn't just dump their black and whites then, they just got moved out of the living room to another room and the color set was moved in their place. The old black and whites didn't get dumped until they got broken beyond reasonable repair, and every small town had at least one TV repair guy who was busy all the time. I am generally speaking, but that is how it went down for the most part.
Now today, most everything electronic is not designed to be repaired, just tossed, a lot of times tossed just because there are new features, even though it isn't broken yet. Totally different culture and business model now. Like how many guys here have a stack of old still working computers but for the most part aren't used? And cellphones? Maybe being geeks we hang onto (some of) them, but most people just chuck stuff out now while it is still working, merely because it is a few years old and now obsolete. either that or the things really don't even last much more than a few years and one cheap dohickey breaks on them and it is neither cost effective nor very easy to fix them.
And I am not sure what you mean by the signal, I have a couple analog black and white portable TVs now (a sony watchman and a 5" screen 12 VDC camping TV) that still work fine, they just don't display color.
HAHAHAHA!
The web is a huge network, a network of networks, mostly accessed by lower powered "terminals" connecting to higher powered servers to "do stuff". Now we can quibble over the precise exact definition of what a terminal is, what constitutes a terminal or not hardware-wise, but the fact remains this is how they are used, as net-terminals, so let's call them that. The number one use of computers by joe and josephine six pack, directly, is to access the internet, and once there, what is online on the remote servers is then the most important thing to them. The look at web pages, use email and chat/IM primarily. You need the network to do that stuff. The internet browser is by far the "killer app" for those net-terminal computers. Games run entirely on the local machine are probably a distant number 2.
I'd say they are a lot more right than wrong on what they saw in 96.
pretty good, man!
I wouldn't even bother trying, not in 2006, becase enough of it is out there now that it isn't totally unknown nor unused. Those businesses (and bosses and shareholders and the boards) that grok how open source works and take advantage of it will get a competitive business advantage in the long run and will be successful. The ones that don't will wonder why and look around and see for themselves, or hear about it at the bar or on the golf links, etc. Joe rich boss A to rich boss B at the golf course after a pitcher of margaritas -> "Man, we were able to skip an entire upgrade cycle with that expensive belchfire software by going to this stack of what those geeks we keep down in the dungeons call "open source" shit. We saved a millyun clams!" "Get outta here!" "Nope, works great, what a pleasure to tell them belchfire sales weasels to go take a hike!"
Along those lines anyway.
Anyway, ya'all in IT can rassle it out. I do farming and gardening and I do "open source" seeds as opposed to "closed source, propietary" seeds. I can save my seeds legally and effectively every year, do my own tweaking and customizing by keeping only the best open pollinated stuff I grow so that every season it gets better, for my particular needs. Some doods like that expensive hybrid action and GM and whatnot, go drop serious folding money every year, I have tried them..meh, not seeing any huge diff at all (sometimes it is even suckier than my open pollinated frankly) and I certainly save a bundle by doing my own seeds for the most part. We who do that with seeds have a rich sharing culture that goes way, way back well before computers and software were even invented, seems to work out just fine.
This is how I finally bingoed to what FLOSS was all about. I had read the words but still didn't get it, I mean I was already using Linux and still didn't get it. But I thought of an analogy. FLOSS is like the olden days community barn raisings. Individually, it was pretty expensive and very difficult for one guy to build his own barn, collectively, members of the community go over on the weekend and help each other out, each contributing the tools and expertise they were the best at, eventually they all have very nice barns, then they can all go about the business of being farmers, were they made their livings at.
I hope so! Tell ya, with the aging of the population that is another untapped market. Cellphones seem to be targeted at the still young,i.e., those without stiff fingers and with still decent eyesight. It's like they are totally ignoring the over 50 crowd, and that demographic has a lot of cash to drop and they like talking on the phone same as anyone.
...which was the most realistic cop show ever on TV and all of them said Barney Miller.
...if you as a consumer would indicate to the vendors that long range battery life is more important than over-all laptop or cellphone lightness. Are you willing to carry an extra pound or two in weight with your laptop? You can have (potentially) a bigger battery, that might be made better-more rugged-so that it is safer plus has good range. Consumers demand the lightest though (I call it the wimpification of society factor), so the vendors are stuck trying to accomodate that. Let the vendors know, starting at the local retail store and on up, tell them you want better batteries, even though it might be heavier. They won't change unless consumers change, end of story. 3 lb laptop with exploding batteries and no hang time, or maybe a 5 lb laptop that actually works and runs all day and doesn't catch fire. Now, maybe it's just me, but I would prefer the 5 lb model (whatever, units used for demonstration purposes only).
Now I have a beef with the cellphones, with the constantly shrinking size, last two stores I went into had no cell phones that to me are large enough to be useful. I don't want a tiny screen and buttons so small you mash three of them at once..but..that's all I am seeing until you get into the ridiculous price class range of PDAs, and now even those (smartphones) are too small. I'd swap 90% of the non phone call making functions in the phone if it was just a larger and to me a more practical phone. The couple I have now I will hang on to as long as possible because they are still moderately useful, but looking at the trends it looks like they want to embed cellphones into a tooth cavity or something pretty soon. I don't know what Lilliputians they use to test drive these new phones, but they have to be three foot tall max with fingers as big as toothpicks and eyes sharp as eagles.
Let's look at it from a tech standpoint, and a logic standpoint. From a tech standpoint, closed source means you have just signed up for having someone keep their hands on your wallet forever, and have turned over long term control of your data to some for-profit vendor who can hold you up for more money down the road, and should they go out of business, you are then screwed as your application gets less and less useful, but your data stays locked in their format and system. Security issues? Too bad, now you have to run your business *plus* take on the burden of running the business of the now out of business closed source software vendor-what a deal! Functionality issues? Too bad, you can't do anything about it, legally anyway, plus see the preceding scenario.
From a logic viewpoint, this is a smooth move-or not. I say not, YMMV. Call it politics, I call it longer range strategic thinking and business planning.
From a financial viewpoint, a perpetual expense with no way to keep costs under control-or not. I believe the slang term used is extortion with the closed source guys. "We can't move our data unless we use their product, which keeps going up in price!!!" "We can't get to our records, the company quit making that software, their last version is full of security holes now, but we need some our machines to be networked and....this sucks!" See?
From a public benefit viewpoint, using tax monies to do this-is this a good deal for the tax payer-or not. I say-not. Looks like a good deal only for the software purchasing decision maker in company x or government y who walks away with the bag of untraceable cash and for the vendor who has created what is called an artificial scarcity business model in his particular niche.
Data centers need to figure out a way to use the "waste" heat and turn it back into something useful, namely electricity. The problem is they generate a lot of heat, but it isn't hot enough, which seems screwy but for co generation you want as hot as possible. So the tech that needs to be developed (along with the obvious not generating so much waste heat through efficiency gains), is to find better ways to accumulate/move and use the low temp stuff they do have lots of. There are some alternative energy projects out there doing that with solar thermal to stirling engines for example.
...maybe we should ask Diebold how that works out.
Agriculture is one of the more intensively computerised industries out there right now. I am in agriculture and we use computers all over. In the house, in the buildings, in the equipment, and having a lot of it net enabled is a big help. I mean there is an A to Z list of where computers are useful and are being used in everything from the backyard garden to the highest levels of commercial production. There's some pretty darn neat stuff too, for example, we just bought a few truckloads of corn for our beefers. The guys we get it from use an autonomous tractor to work their fields. That's right, no humans drive the thing, GPS and a computer does it once the field is surveyed once to define the limits and shape (by driving the perimeter once), a computer analyses it and determines the most efficient planting and harvesting pattern, and then goes and does it with little human intervention. Where we live part of the operation is poultry and the houses are heavily computerised, everything, temperature, feeding, watering, electricity supply for all of that, all mostly automated now, and net enabled so it can be remotely monitored and trouble-shot if needs be.
If I was joe farmer in the developing world, I would want at least one computer and net access, for the weather, looking up parts and suppliers, monitoring the markets, learning about new techniques and improving technology, etc, etc. All good stuff and useful. Heck, I use the net just to look up weeds to see what they are sometimes, or to look up more exotic seeds to try for instance, or to look at new breeds of animals, etc. I've ordered a lot of old weird parts for machinery online, because that is a lot more efficient than driving around dealer to dealer. I use the net all the time for stuff like that.
...when it comes to heinous pain and misery when it comes to the wars started by and run for the profit of the top 1%. If you want to call that a tax that is, they are taxed the most in what really matters.