Re:I agree - why no decentralization of energy?
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I beg to differ, if only by a bit. Particularly, this line:
Growing your energy out of the soil is a really bad way of fueling the world and would lead to mass soil destruction, starvation, landslides, and all sorts of other unpleasantness.
... is pretty far-out. I mean, jeez louise, chicken little. What route did you take to get to landslides and starvation? I've never seen or heard of a landslide in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa or Oklahoma. I challenge you to find just one in any of those grainbelt states. If you do find one, I can guarantee you it ain't anywhere near a farm. Farmers, it may surprise you, want the dirt to stay right where it is. Starvation? In the US? Sorry, we have the opposite problem, here.
For bio-fuels, what you're really looking at is oily seed crops. If you look at the common grains used to produce oils, it's mostly canola, soybean, corn and cottonseed. The farms that produce these crops are already in operation, and are laid out pretty extensively across the US breadbasket. These crops have been produced for many many decades (some for centuries, as in corn and cotton) and the land still produces. This destruction you herald already took place a long time ago. Good crop rotation and soil investment are old tools in the agricultural toolkit, and they seem to work just fine at the task of producing sustainable yields. If you're concerned about pesticide application, that's a bit of another story. There are chemicals used to fight the pests that kill the plant and there are some that fight the pests that make the crop less attractive as foodstuff or material (in the case of cotton), but if you're growing grains for oil, you're concerned about keeping the plant alive, and not about the cotton yield or the attractiveness of the grain -- odds are you could reduce pesticide applications, or narrow their spectrum. Fertilizer may be important for poorer soils, but there are ways to avoid most of them through soil investment and crop rotation. The organic farming crowd and the compost-evangelists are good resources for fact checking. Remember, when you're growing a crop for oil, the strictures of totally organic approaches to cultivation don't have to be applied so rigourously -- there can be a mix of organic and chemical fertilization techniques.
In corn, you have a crop that's produced at a huge surplus -- there's lots of it that the DOA buys and gives away at taxpayer expense. As a percentage of mass, though, corn is only about 10% oil at best, and soybeans only 15%. I forget what canola is, offhand, but it's not much better. The really neat crop alternative is mustard seed, of all things. There are comparatively fewer specific pests than the other crops, it can be grown in poorer soils and it's oil percentage is a little more than 40%. While it's not as widely grown as the other major grains, it's probably a safe bet that mustard seed could be grown on a much smaller footprint per ton of oil generated than the other grain alternatives.
Agriculture isn't bad in and of itself. It helps feed us and clothe us and give us shelter and paper. It can be done sustainably, and the environmental impacts can be moderated if they can't be negated. Every now and again, I hear someone rail against evil agriculture. Then I wonder what they eat.
When I read your post I wasn't exactly sure of what to make of it. I'm in agreement about the treason thing, though. It's a word that gets used in the most hyperbolic of rhetoric and I don't think it applies oftentimes.
The argument that the NSA wiretapping program has never been proven to be illegal is a bit of a red herring. The point of fact is that it will never get a hearing, nor can it, because it's secret. The real issue is the bypassing of the FISA court and the reporting rules, but there is an accessory issue in the admission that American citizens are under surveillance. Not that this is new, by the way. It's just now coming to light.
I had an old co-worker who worked at the NSA and he could not talk about most of it, but the one thing he could say was (to paraphrase) "If you wonder if they know about these things (terrorist cells/plots), or whether they knew about them before, stop wondering. They knew then and they know now."
The democrat that wanted to censure (I think it was Feingold) didn't get laughed at so much as presented with silence. The challenge of the censure motion was that there were not enough ready votes to be able to support it, given GOP domination of both houses of congress. He was on the right track, in the view of the DNC, but a little premature. If dems (and maybe some centrist republicans) were to have backed censure, it would take away a rallying cry for the midterm election cycle this fall.
It'll be very interesting to see how things change in November, that's for sure.
It's been a long time, but I thought that state legislatures could also recommend impeachment. I'm not sure if it just takes one state or many, or if many, how many, but I could swear that there's a way to start the impeachment process at the state level. Can someone who knows more inform or correct my inderstanding?
TFA related it as "anti-wind power activists" or something like that. It was the poster that tied it to environmentalism. TFA seems to indicate that it's mostly about very rich people who have the NIMBY thing going. Nantucket isn't a place where people are anything like the obvious stereotype you write of. In fact, they're mostly very rich and very conservative out there. As a lefty lib myself, it's a bit irritating to see these folks wrapping themselves in the cloak of environmentalism, but it's sooo easy to see through their motives that anyone can spot their hypocrisy.
It's okay. This is slashdot and rudeness is the coin of the realm. I confess to being rude myself every now and then, though I resist it.
I think there's a distinction to be made on the point of "fiddling". Most of what I know about any machine/OS I've ever used came from "fiddling". Some of my best-learned lessons came from things I did as root or admin. There's nothing like horking something to the best of your ability three times in a row (and re-installing the OS at each stroke) and finally seeing things work out in the end. Experimentation is a key part of learning, and making serious mistakes is extremely instructive, if not a little frustrating at times.
Paying someone may not be an option, after all. When I took on sysadmin responsibilities at a startup I worked for, I had the most basic familiarity with UNIX, but my boss gave me a generous book allowance, and I was permitted to bring in as many of my own machines as needed to experiment, and every now and again he'd spring for a new server a few months in advance so that I could get my experimenting out of the way and develop a better understanding of what the machine needed and how to tune it to our requirements. It was great. We didn't have thousands of dollars to throw at self-important consultants (not being rude, here -- about half of the consultants I've ever met are self-important) on whom we would have to become dependent, who wouldn't be closely tied to our business needs, and who could walk away from us at any time to work on someone else's shiny new 733+ systems.
My personal feeling is that anyone who is an SA needs to be provided with one trashable example of every platform they're expected to support ("trashable" meaning it's not production -- just a spot for experimenting and can be wiped clean at a whim). Yes, books, manuals and web resources are important, but getting one's hands dirty and doing what might be pretty dangerous things as you're developing your chops is equally, if not more important than the reading part.
I know it's an anecdote, but I may be seeing evidence of the lack of Indian IT talent, I think.
I manage an SCM team for a fortune-15 company and we recently offshored a whole buncha development and regression testing activity to Bangalore. When it started to ramp up, it became pretty clear that having an SCM role in place out there would be an advantage -- we could avoid having to run a 24-7 on-call SCM shop here if we had the right supporting resources on-site and available to our good friends in India. Basically, it amounted to finding a couple people at our main contractor who had some UNIX and SCM chops, training them here in the states for awhile in our SCM processes, procedures and tooling and then sending them back to mind and monitor the SCM duties for the groups out there. Sounds pretty simple, right? Wrong-a-rooney!
Our stateside rep for the Indian contractor didn't have the guts to tell me directly, but they "could not find anyone with the necessary skills" and "that type of role is not a part of their service offering, anyway". It could be for any number of reasons, but it seems to me that so much money is flying over there that our good buddies in Bangalore can now pick and choose which projects they want. Now that I've successfully exhausted the SCM knowledge of a nation with a population of a billion people or so, I can safely make an argument for spending our money on a reliable American technician who's worth every penny.
Excellent modern management, my Indian friends... excellent. Keep it up. Someone get a shout out to Tom Friedman to let him know the world just got a lot more spherical all the sudden!
For the type of engineering resources I need, your odds of getting hired in the good ol' US of A just increased.
Yup, there, I said it. I've got a 2-door 1999 Jeep Cheokee SE 4WD with the 4.0L inline 6-cyl engine. 106K miles and going strong. Gets about 23 mpg. It's a small SUV, by standards, but it fits what I do.
What do I have it for, you may ask?
Well, I live in Denver, Colorado and I ski and camp and fish and go shooting at a couple dozen different times all through the year. Sometimes the roads are snowy and 4WD really comes in handy. Somtimes I'm on back roads or jeep trails to get to the res or campsite. Sometimes I head out into the plains to the range, out there in dirt-road farm country where you just don't want to get stuck. I also have to get to work during the snowy months and high-clearance 4WD makes that easier... and yes, I do know how to drive in the snow.
For all those activities (except work) I'm hauling at least 1 dog and 1 cooler plus whatever else comes with the activity -- skis, camp gear, guns, tackle, etc. My Jeep gets pretty dirty, inside and out. No sedan could take that kind of (ab)use.
So when I hear people bashing away at "those evil SUVs and their evil owners who are hurting my child's planet", I think that it's just a bit reactionary and generally inconsiderate. The only person entitled to define and satisfy my needs is me. I strongly believe that anyone who thinks they know my needs better than me is two bricks shy of a full load and maybe a little self-righteous, too. Yup, I drive a "gas-guzzling uber-polluting SUV", but I pay the brown sign, too.
Maybe there are people who could be just as happy with a sedan, but there are other features of SUVs that have pretty broad appeal -- the ride height, confidence in-collision (perhaps misplaced if you don't know how to drive one without rolling it over), powerful engines, more confidence that you won't get stuck in crappy conditions, etc. Oddly enough, it's that first one -- ride height -- that really pulls people into driving an SUV, and especially women, I've noticed.
I've got a motorcycle that I take to work about 50% of the time in the summer, but in general the Jeep's the daily driver. Since I bought it, there have been some neat cars to come out that have jeep-like features without the weight. I've comtemplated buying a subcompact for the highway drives, but when it comes down to it, I need a vehicle I can abuse in the mountains and in the snow and on the back roads, so I'd still be keeping the Jeep.
I've heard this approach suggested before and I confess that I'm not such a fan.
Isn't raising the tax on fuel a regressive tax? As a percentage of income, people in the lowest income brackets would be paying disproportionately more than those in the highest brackets. Furthermore, people in those lower income classifications are less able to get rid of a gas guzzler and replace it with a new hybrid or some other newer, more economical model.
If I could modify your approach, I'd extend the tax to jet fuel and all other refined petroleum products. In that way, industry and the rich would also be doing their part.
However, as much as I think taxes can be a force to get people to change behaviors (sin taxes and the like), I think simply having the cost of a good rise due to market forces is the better option.
I can't say how it works in other countries, just to qualify my response.
The ballots are pretty much a known quantity for more than a month before election day. Yeah, when you show up at the polls, you can read the synopses of the various initiatives and referenda right there in the booth, but the whole thing is usually given pretty extensive coverage in the daily papers for weeks in advance. Then there's the TV and Radio ad time weeks in advance for anyone for or against the issues/candidates. We have "signage patrols" that may come around and ask you if you know about referendum X, get your position, hand you pamphlets and ask if you want the sign. There are lots of canvassing efforts in neighborhoods that are considered close calls. Then there are the auto-dialed campaign messages (if you're not on a telemarketing do-not-call list). Also, the League of Women Voters puts out a summary booklet that presents the entire text of proposed legislation, referenda, initiatives, and the jurists that are up for election/renewal. Figure, too, that there are federal state and county items in tha mix, too. The booklet can run 100 pages some years, but it's all there, including issue summaries that are more extensive than you see in the polling booth.
Anyhow, what I'm getting at is that you can spend as much time as you want getting prepared for the election. Some folks just vote in the major races. Most people do not even bother casting votes for judges... the thought being that since these folks don't usually run campaigns you don't know who you're voting for. Myself, I vote for every other judge, starting with the first, just to add some randomness to the process of selecting for the bench.
I'm now a manager after a decade of being an engineer and I find management to be very challenging. Irritating at times, sometimes very rewarding, but a hard job to do well. It's not a thing that's easy to compare with engineering, where I was focused on the question of "does it work or doesn't it?" and then on making it work. Instead I spend my time on relationship management, goal setting, budgets, project planning, personnel issues (hiring and firing). All of those things are guided by the policy and practices of my company, but I'm forever having to make judgements in uncertain circumstances where the outcomes are not easy to anticipate and the result could mean the difference between winning or losing tens of millions of dollars or any number of employees. Everyone thinks they can be a manager. It's easy, right? Try it sometime, if you haven't already. Maybe you have and you found it easy. The best managers I've ever had, and the executives I have as mentors, have all found management to be one of the most challenging job roles they've ever had. I'd agree. The stakes are so much higher and the opportunities for failure are so much more numerous.
To get back on-topic, I found that I had to change my dress a little bit when I assumed the new role, and it's actually made it easier for me to be get work done in meetings (it's harder to dismiss someone when they're dressed just like you are) and easier to get and stay in touch with the execs. Not much has changed -- no more shorts, no more t-shirts, no more sandals, dark socks instead of white tubes, wearing a pressed dress shirt, keeping my beard trimmed when I grow it for the winter, more regular haircuts, nicer shoes -- these are not big changes. I still wear jeans almost every day. I seem to get more dates with the ladies, too, which is nice.
And to the long-hair bearded techie (GP or GGP, it's hard to spot) that wrote:
"Deal with it. I'm smarter than you. I could do your job in my sleep; you couldn't do mine in a million years."
All I can say is "You again? I've already turned you down for jobs twice this month, and not because of your appearance. It's because you're such an arrogant prick that nobody on my team could stand the thought of working with you. Get a haircut and a clue."
There are soo many of those groups around here, it's ridiculous. The odd thing is that were never quite so coordinated as they've become over the past ten years or so. Kinda scary in a way.
Well, the US did have a fairly defensive posture throughout the cold war, and one of the main critiques of it (something which rang true for many voters, too) was that it made the military weak. Iraq is not a war of conquest, really. It's a terrible travesty that was foisted on the American people in the hyper-nationalistic aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks, but Iraq will continue to be Iraq, run by Iraqis (at least the ones that are sensitive to US concerns in the region) and eventually left to its own devices. Make no mistake, by invading the country and having to remain there in the destabilized aftermath, the US has signed up for more than a decade of presence there, but we've had longer tenures in other (admittedly more friendly) nations and America will stick it out in Iraq, too.
Let me lay it out very clearly for you. Islamic terrorists run around blowing things up for one reason: because they read the Koran to say that anyone who is not a muslim, or anyone that associates with non-muslims is an infidel and must die. If they don't kill the infidels and the apostates that associate with them, they will not reach heaven, nor will anyone in their family. It's that simple, really. It's been going on since long before the US came into being. Israel gets socked because it's viewed as an imperialist occupier of muslim lands. This "One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" notion is the comfy pillow for people who do not want to call a spade a spade. It's a spade, my friend. It's not some altruistic vision that revealed itself to poor helpless people oppressed by America. More than half the 9-11 terrorists were Saudi -- rich people who don't work for a living and have never had want for anything. Same thing for the Cole attack in Yemen. Lost everything? Under threat? Bullshit.
Oh, by the way, the American Civil War was fought because close to half of the states of the union (those that happened to have the majority of the available coastline of the nation and more than half the arable land, it's worth noting) decided that they wanted to secede from the union because they wanted the freedom to own slaves and keep making money on the main trade good of cotton. The Union had an army and the Confederacy had an army. They were mustered and uniformed and drilled and fought most of their battles in the open, with faces uncovered. One side wanted free labor and little federal control and the other wanted unity as a single nation that would not enslave people. This simply does not even come close to the current situation the world faces against Islamic terrorism.
I loved this bit so much I had to dupe it:
"...being refused credit is a position where ones courage, attitude and honour comes under scrutiny."
What a pompous bucket of tripe! Being refused credit has nothing to do with any of those things. It's about the borrower's ability to pay back the debt in question in the given time period. There is always another lender, and the higher the rate of return (read: interest), the more attractive the loan becomes to entities that have the money. The American economy will have challenges, but remember this simple fact: if America goes down, everyone else goes with it... China, too, my friend. Japan had a pretty great economy going for awhile, there, and the ripple effects from its tanking are still being felt. If the same happened to America, the scale would be amazing. Be careful of your schadenfreude, you may find yourself more affected by American economic instability than you think.
There are some complexities that are getting missed in your assessment.
First, the US can't cut military spending by 90-95%. It's simply ridiculous to suggest. The US has so much infrastructure (both in-country and outside) that there's always a significant outlay of cash required to keep it running. The military's strategic and logistical partnerships with other nations span the globe. US bases overseas are part of the socioeconomic framework of the host countries. As much as American towns and cities resist the closure of bases, so do the communities overseas. In Germany, for example, US military bases provide a lot of economic stability and when these bases are closed (as is happening now in the current re-alignment), the effects are just as devastating as they are for American towns. Barber shops, hardware stores, furniture stores, construction firms, grocers, etc. all take a hit when, say, 20% of the town's population picks up and leaves. Also, the US military must have the best of every kind of system. Part of the problem with being the biggest and the strongest is that you have to maintain that state, which is costly. It's safe to say that the military-industrial complex is simply too large and too powerful, but they would not be that way if the US didn't require the best and most advanced equipment.
What I think you may be driving at is the cost of conflict, which is high in wartime. Regardless of where one stands on the reasons for conflict or their validity, Americans are bearing the overwhelming cost of current wartime activity. It's especially so in Iraq, and perhaps less so in Afghanistan, but that may reflect where the international community sees the greatest need. The US is not the only victim of Islamic terrorism, after all. What may also be adding to the current cost of conflict is that a sizable chunk of that money (~400 billion for Iraq so far) is being spent with contractors like Titan, Khaki, KBR (and other Halliburton subsidiaries), Triple Canopy, etc. Military contracts in wartime are not unusual by themselves, but this is the first war for the US in which the profits of contractors and suppliers have not been restricted and tax cuts have been permitted. Furthermore, the American citizenry has not been asked to sacrifice anything for the effort -- there's no draft, there is no rationing of fuel or foodstuffs, for example. If the revenue gets cut and the costs are magnified, the fiscal problem gets bigger.
The biggest piece of spending, apart from entitlements, goes to service the debt. That piece gets bigger and bigger every year. As it does, other spending gets squeezed out. Entitlements are ripe for squeezing, btw. You can short people on their entitlements, but you can't miss a debt payment.
As for China holding our debt, they're not alone. Lots of nations buy US treasury bonds. What's important to remember is that the US has a very diverse and powerful economy. Even though there is a lot of US paper around, China in particular still finds it wise to peg their curency against the dollar. Yes, there is the risk of interest rate hikes. However, China has no banking system, really -- not in a sense that any western nation would recognize. The national merchant/investment bank is a near-empty building that is staffed by a handful of people who are paid to sit at desks and do nothing. I saw a report on it about a month ago on 60 minutes. (I looked for a link but didn't find one, but you could probably buy the transcript.)
So, yeah the debt's a problem, but it's not quite so dire just yet. In 20 year's time, when the full weight of entitlements are felt and the current trends of the additional debt are played out, then it will be a crisis. Right now, America needs better fiscal leadership. Traditionally, that's been territory claimed by republicans, but it's safe to say that times have changed. I'm not happy with the current situation, either, but I'm optimistic about the prospects for a strong reaction against nonstop spending and war pr
I'd only add that the reason my dad had for not going with Linux was that he could not figure out how to install stuff. Having to use the command-line is a real pain-in-the-patootie for people like my pop. Now, to be fair, my dad was using card-stack programs for years before the PC came around (worked as an accountant at Control Data back in the 60s) and command-line tools for years once the chaplinesque PC hit the desktop, but he's become accustomed to the advances in simplification that GUI tools and abstractions provide.
His response amounts to "I'm too old to spend time figuring that stuff out. I spent weeks learning VisiCalc and look at what a waste of time that was. Windows runs excel, which is what me and everyone else at my company uses. When Linux runs excel and I don't have to learn a bunch of stupid commands to set it up and run it, I'll consider it."
Honestly, I think that Linux needs a lot of the conventional GUI abstractions (like "Add-Remove Programs") that Windows users have become used to in order to get people to switch. I also believe that most Windows users have had very little experience with open source tools and there's a certain amount of fright involved in going with something that has a brand but not a single company to back the brand up.
Well, I've had some experience with just this type of thing. I worked for 3 years as a document clerk at a major automotive products liability (defense) law firm. It was my job to not only accumulate exhibits for pre-trial and trial, but to participate in the searching/organizing of the documents. It was all under the supervision of the atty handling the case, so I was never in a position to be able to hide or show any document from the atty, and 99% of the docs had been reviewed by the client's own in-house counsel and/or used to respond to requests for discovery in previous litigations.
Still, there were some documents that did not look favorable to the client if you looked at them in one particular way or another. Had I gone ahead and copied these documents and released them to a reporter, I'd have been in serious hot water. Had I been so stupid as to leak company-confidental communications between 2 company lawyers (just as bad if not worse), I'd have been similarly charged, no doubt.
First, I was under a very restrictive non-disclosure agreement about talking about any pending litigation, confidential/privileged communications between our firm and the client, and all of the client's documents. (Incidentally, communications between a client's attys, whether they are the in-house general counsel or attys retained by the client or both, are the property of the client.) Once something's been filed in court, it's public record and anyone can look at it. If asked about what I was working on, I could describe general things, like "I'm working on the exhibits for some passive restraints litigation against Honda." or "I'm watching Failure Analysis and Sandia tip-up videos that might be used for some exhibits in a Ford rollover case.", but I could not go into detail. I could even name the case if I wanted to since the case is public record and anyone could look for it, but doing even that is probably poor form.
Second, once you take a document out of the firm, or share something with a third party that is unconnected to the case, you've just screwed yourself and the firm you work for. What client would want to retain such an undisciplined firm? It's in the client's interest to retain representation that is looking out for problem areas in their defense, and conscientous representation will advise the client about how to handle questionable evidence in such a way that the client can be seen in the best light possible. For a clerk to intercede on those discussions by publicizing the evidence in advance of trial is not only unprofessional, not only a breach of contract/agreement, but may also throw the whole case into jeopardy.
The fact is that he was a contractor who took privileged communications between Diebold attys and passed it along. I think the felony access charge sounds a bit over-the-top because he may have access to the communications as a part of regular duties, but the burglary and receiving stolen property charges sound like exactly what Jones Day would want him to be charged with. TFA does not say if the guy left or was fired from Jones Day or not, or what the timing was between when he worked at Jones Day and when he actually passed the documents on, but this would be a firing offense for sure, and probably a breach of the NDA he's sure to have signed.
I'll bet a plate of nachos that someone at Jones Day talked with someone at the DA's office about the thing and that because it's 1) serious enough of a thing to poison the judicial waters against Diebold in particular and 2) may lead to the poisoning of the judicial conditions for future defendants if let unprosecuted in this instance, that the DA has a real interest in taking it to court.
Yup. I've had to jump through similar hoops with Sony, but more through a systems admin function.
My main worry is that because more portable file formats (I'll take flat ASCII text!) won't be seen as enforceable given the whole DRM battle in films and music, that access to multiple, open publishing formats will be locked out. I'm all for hacks to get around temporary portability problems, but if Sony really wants to be the leader they need to open up the text publishing space (I'm not referring to films and music) to include all kinds of formats and cheapen the cost of the presentation hardware.
I confess that I don't know how to make the model pay, but I'm thinking about subscriptions. Yunno, you pay 50 quatloos for all, real-time access to the library of congress, and the ability to audit or buy any of the books recorded by it -- wirelessly, in your flying car. Text Service Providers could allow consumers to accumulate a digital library that would exist remotely but could be reproduced anywhere. The idea is that you pay for the rights, but the presentation of the content depends on your device and your ISP.
I just want lots of books to be free, personally, but if you have to pay for them, they should be so cheap and easy as a newspaper, and available everywhere. If I'm already paying for a cell phone that can display pages of colored text, I've got the paper and all I need is the content.
* sigh *
I've had mixed feelings about Sony hardware. What's been your experience?
Admittedly, the E-ink excerpt makes it seem like the article is a dupe, but it's not exactly so.
Apart from talking about E-ink, it does lay out a few possible reasons for why electronic books have not been adopted as quickly as MP3 players and Treo-Crackberries. The article, had you read it, also points out that the content problem (that is, there's so much more available in dead-tree form) is being chipped away at as new publishing models go mainstream at joints like Amazon. If Tim O'Reilly says that content has now reached a critical mass, I'm inclined to see the article more in the light of a broad update on progress in the electronic publishing part of consumer electronics.
Before I suffer the inevitable stinging, indignant and defensive retort by TMM (which I will wear as a badge of honor, as if I were kicked by the pope), I'd like to point out that the Businessweek reader is not cut from the same cloth as the slashdot crowd. Yup, we've been attuned to the technical developments for a long time, so it's not "News for nerds", really. What I think we can take from it is that the over-hype of e-books 3-5 years ago (that which exposed just how feeble a publishing medium it was with the technology of the time) faded away and out of consumer consciousness only to now reappear with more strength. The conditions are different, now, and the casual Businessweek reader is hearing about it.
The first e-book I read was Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown", and I picked it up because it was free and I could get the reader very easily for my now-antiquated Palm IIIe. The issue that #1) didn't get covered in TFA and #2) I believe to be the unspoken greater barrier to adoption than the electronic device/technology that displays the text, is the issue of file formats. Sony, as TFA tells us, is leaping into e-books now that there is e-ink, and you can bet that Sony's e-books will come in their own proprietary e-format, and will be only e-readable by their devices. I would e-hope that e-book device and e-content distributors can e-agree that they'll support multiple e-file formats and e-reading software.
While I have e-hope, I'm pretty sure I'm e-smoking e-crack on that one.
God, I hate those freakin' "e-" prefixes. I swore I'd never use them and Businessweek made me do it.
This was actually my first machine. It was a castoff from my dad's construction firm once they got a -=real=- Chaplinesque IBM PC.
I loved my Osborne. I kept it and used it almost all the way through college, through about 1991, when I got an IBM PS2.
Great programs on the Osborne (CP/M): Microsoft BASIC, WordStar, CBASIC, Mychess, Invaders, and Microsoft Adventure (You are at Witt's End. Passages extend in all directions.) I wrote a number of different wrappers to ease my way through CP/M. At one point, I had emulated the command-line of the Apple ][+ so that my Apple-based pals could have an easier time with old Ozzie.
The Ozzie taught me a lot -- I learned how to make the proprietary cables that went with it (you can't buy 'em anymore and they were hard to find even a matter of years after Osbornes hit the marketplace).
I can't imagine what the thing cost my dad, but it was a great little machine. My ex-wife made me get rid of it many years ago -- a decision I have regretted ever since.
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Growing your energy out of the soil is a really bad way of fueling the world and would lead to mass soil destruction, starvation, landslides, and all sorts of other unpleasantness.
... is pretty far-out. I mean, jeez louise, chicken little. What route did you take to get to landslides and starvation? I've never seen or heard of a landslide in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa or Oklahoma. I challenge you to find just one in any of those grainbelt states. If you do find one, I can guarantee you it ain't anywhere near a farm. Farmers, it may surprise you, want the dirt to stay right where it is. Starvation? In the US? Sorry, we have the opposite problem, here.
For bio-fuels, what you're really looking at is oily seed crops. If you look at the common grains used to produce oils, it's mostly canola, soybean, corn and cottonseed. The farms that produce these crops are already in operation, and are laid out pretty extensively across the US breadbasket. These crops have been produced for many many decades (some for centuries, as in corn and cotton) and the land still produces. This destruction you herald already took place a long time ago. Good crop rotation and soil investment are old tools in the agricultural toolkit, and they seem to work just fine at the task of producing sustainable yields. If you're concerned about pesticide application, that's a bit of another story. There are chemicals used to fight the pests that kill the plant and there are some that fight the pests that make the crop less attractive as foodstuff or material (in the case of cotton), but if you're growing grains for oil, you're concerned about keeping the plant alive, and not about the cotton yield or the attractiveness of the grain -- odds are you could reduce pesticide applications, or narrow their spectrum. Fertilizer may be important for poorer soils, but there are ways to avoid most of them through soil investment and crop rotation. The organic farming crowd and the compost-evangelists are good resources for fact checking. Remember, when you're growing a crop for oil, the strictures of totally organic approaches to cultivation don't have to be applied so rigourously -- there can be a mix of organic and chemical fertilization techniques.
In corn, you have a crop that's produced at a huge surplus -- there's lots of it that the DOA buys and gives away at taxpayer expense. As a percentage of mass, though, corn is only about 10% oil at best, and soybeans only 15%. I forget what canola is, offhand, but it's not much better. The really neat crop alternative is mustard seed, of all things. There are comparatively fewer specific pests than the other crops, it can be grown in poorer soils and it's oil percentage is a little more than 40%. While it's not as widely grown as the other major grains, it's probably a safe bet that mustard seed could be grown on a much smaller footprint per ton of oil generated than the other grain alternatives.
Agriculture isn't bad in and of itself. It helps feed us and clothe us and give us shelter and paper. It can be done sustainably, and the environmental impacts can be moderated if they can't be negated. Every now and again, I hear someone rail against evil agriculture. Then I wonder what they eat.
The CIA is built for exactly that purpose. I saw an interview with the deputy dir under the presidency of GHWB where he said exactly that.
Thanks.
Thanks for saying that.
It's a spectrum, isn't it?
I thought it was more statutory than that. My mistake.
The argument that the NSA wiretapping program has never been proven to be illegal is a bit of a red herring. The point of fact is that it will never get a hearing, nor can it, because it's secret. The real issue is the bypassing of the FISA court and the reporting rules, but there is an accessory issue in the admission that American citizens are under surveillance. Not that this is new, by the way. It's just now coming to light.
I had an old co-worker who worked at the NSA and he could not talk about most of it, but the one thing he could say was (to paraphrase) "If you wonder if they know about these things (terrorist cells/plots), or whether they knew about them before, stop wondering. They knew then and they know now."
The democrat that wanted to censure (I think it was Feingold) didn't get laughed at so much as presented with silence. The challenge of the censure motion was that there were not enough ready votes to be able to support it, given GOP domination of both houses of congress. He was on the right track, in the view of the DNC, but a little premature. If dems (and maybe some centrist republicans) were to have backed censure, it would take away a rallying cry for the midterm election cycle this fall.
It'll be very interesting to see how things change in November, that's for sure.
It's been a long time, but I thought that state legislatures could also recommend impeachment. I'm not sure if it just takes one state or many, or if many, how many, but I could swear that there's a way to start the impeachment process at the state level. Can someone who knows more inform or correct my inderstanding?
Aye! :-)
Thank you for pointing it out.
I think you mean "doubleplusungood", comrade.
I think there's a distinction to be made on the point of "fiddling". Most of what I know about any machine/OS I've ever used came from "fiddling". Some of my best-learned lessons came from things I did as root or admin. There's nothing like horking something to the best of your ability three times in a row (and re-installing the OS at each stroke) and finally seeing things work out in the end. Experimentation is a key part of learning, and making serious mistakes is extremely instructive, if not a little frustrating at times.
Paying someone may not be an option, after all. When I took on sysadmin responsibilities at a startup I worked for, I had the most basic familiarity with UNIX, but my boss gave me a generous book allowance, and I was permitted to bring in as many of my own machines as needed to experiment, and every now and again he'd spring for a new server a few months in advance so that I could get my experimenting out of the way and develop a better understanding of what the machine needed and how to tune it to our requirements. It was great. We didn't have thousands of dollars to throw at self-important consultants (not being rude, here -- about half of the consultants I've ever met are self-important) on whom we would have to become dependent, who wouldn't be closely tied to our business needs, and who could walk away from us at any time to work on someone else's shiny new 733+ systems.
My personal feeling is that anyone who is an SA needs to be provided with one trashable example of every platform they're expected to support ("trashable" meaning it's not production -- just a spot for experimenting and can be wiped clean at a whim). Yes, books, manuals and web resources are important, but getting one's hands dirty and doing what might be pretty dangerous things as you're developing your chops is equally, if not more important than the reading part.
See what I'm driving at?
I manage an SCM team for a fortune-15 company and we recently offshored a whole buncha development and regression testing activity to Bangalore. When it started to ramp up, it became pretty clear that having an SCM role in place out there would be an advantage -- we could avoid having to run a 24-7 on-call SCM shop here if we had the right supporting resources on-site and available to our good friends in India. Basically, it amounted to finding a couple people at our main contractor who had some UNIX and SCM chops, training them here in the states for awhile in our SCM processes, procedures and tooling and then sending them back to mind and monitor the SCM duties for the groups out there. Sounds pretty simple, right? Wrong-a-rooney!
Our stateside rep for the Indian contractor didn't have the guts to tell me directly, but they "could not find anyone with the necessary skills" and "that type of role is not a part of their service offering, anyway". It could be for any number of reasons, but it seems to me that so much money is flying over there that our good buddies in Bangalore can now pick and choose which projects they want. Now that I've successfully exhausted the SCM knowledge of a nation with a population of a billion people or so, I can safely make an argument for spending our money on a reliable American technician who's worth every penny.
Excellent modern management, my Indian friends ... excellent. Keep it up. Someone get a shout out to Tom Friedman to let him know the world just got a lot more spherical all the sudden!
For the type of engineering resources I need, your odds of getting hired in the good ol' US of A just increased.
What do I have it for, you may ask?
Well, I live in Denver, Colorado and I ski and camp and fish and go shooting at a couple dozen different times all through the year. Sometimes the roads are snowy and 4WD really comes in handy. Somtimes I'm on back roads or jeep trails to get to the res or campsite. Sometimes I head out into the plains to the range, out there in dirt-road farm country where you just don't want to get stuck. I also have to get to work during the snowy months and high-clearance 4WD makes that easier ... and yes, I do know how to drive in the snow.
For all those activities (except work) I'm hauling at least 1 dog and 1 cooler plus whatever else comes with the activity -- skis, camp gear, guns, tackle, etc. My Jeep gets pretty dirty, inside and out. No sedan could take that kind of (ab)use.
So when I hear people bashing away at "those evil SUVs and their evil owners who are hurting my child's planet", I think that it's just a bit reactionary and generally inconsiderate. The only person entitled to define and satisfy my needs is me. I strongly believe that anyone who thinks they know my needs better than me is two bricks shy of a full load and maybe a little self-righteous, too. Yup, I drive a "gas-guzzling uber-polluting SUV", but I pay the brown sign, too.
Maybe there are people who could be just as happy with a sedan, but there are other features of SUVs that have pretty broad appeal -- the ride height, confidence in-collision (perhaps misplaced if you don't know how to drive one without rolling it over), powerful engines, more confidence that you won't get stuck in crappy conditions, etc. Oddly enough, it's that first one -- ride height -- that really pulls people into driving an SUV, and especially women, I've noticed.
I've got a motorcycle that I take to work about 50% of the time in the summer, but in general the Jeep's the daily driver. Since I bought it, there have been some neat cars to come out that have jeep-like features without the weight. I've comtemplated buying a subcompact for the highway drives, but when it comes down to it, I need a vehicle I can abuse in the mountains and in the snow and on the back roads, so I'd still be keeping the Jeep.
Sorry, Charlie.
Isn't raising the tax on fuel a regressive tax? As a percentage of income, people in the lowest income brackets would be paying disproportionately more than those in the highest brackets. Furthermore, people in those lower income classifications are less able to get rid of a gas guzzler and replace it with a new hybrid or some other newer, more economical model.
If I could modify your approach, I'd extend the tax to jet fuel and all other refined petroleum products. In that way, industry and the rich would also be doing their part.
However, as much as I think taxes can be a force to get people to change behaviors (sin taxes and the like), I think simply having the cost of a good rise due to market forces is the better option.
I can't say how it works in other countries, just to qualify my response.
The ballots are pretty much a known quantity for more than a month before election day. Yeah, when you show up at the polls, you can read the synopses of the various initiatives and referenda right there in the booth, but the whole thing is usually given pretty extensive coverage in the daily papers for weeks in advance. Then there's the TV and Radio ad time weeks in advance for anyone for or against the issues/candidates. We have "signage patrols" that may come around and ask you if you know about referendum X, get your position, hand you pamphlets and ask if you want the sign. There are lots of canvassing efforts in neighborhoods that are considered close calls. Then there are the auto-dialed campaign messages (if you're not on a telemarketing do-not-call list). Also, the League of Women Voters puts out a summary booklet that presents the entire text of proposed legislation, referenda, initiatives, and the jurists that are up for election/renewal. Figure, too, that there are federal state and county items in tha mix, too. The booklet can run 100 pages some years, but it's all there, including issue summaries that are more extensive than you see in the polling booth.
Anyhow, what I'm getting at is that you can spend as much time as you want getting prepared for the election. Some folks just vote in the major races. Most people do not even bother casting votes for judges... the thought being that since these folks don't usually run campaigns you don't know who you're voting for. Myself, I vote for every other judge, starting with the first, just to add some randomness to the process of selecting for the bench.
To get back on-topic, I found that I had to change my dress a little bit when I assumed the new role, and it's actually made it easier for me to be get work done in meetings (it's harder to dismiss someone when they're dressed just like you are) and easier to get and stay in touch with the execs. Not much has changed -- no more shorts, no more t-shirts, no more sandals, dark socks instead of white tubes, wearing a pressed dress shirt, keeping my beard trimmed when I grow it for the winter, more regular haircuts, nicer shoes -- these are not big changes. I still wear jeans almost every day. I seem to get more dates with the ladies, too, which is nice.
And to the long-hair bearded techie (GP or GGP, it's hard to spot) that wrote:
"Deal with it. I'm smarter than you. I could do your job in my sleep; you couldn't do mine in a million years."
All I can say is "You again? I've already turned you down for jobs twice this month, and not because of your appearance. It's because you're such an arrogant prick that nobody on my team could stand the thought of working with you. Get a haircut and a clue."
There are soo many of those groups around here, it's ridiculous. The odd thing is that were never quite so coordinated as they've become over the past ten years or so. Kinda scary in a way.
Well, the US did have a fairly defensive posture throughout the cold war, and one of the main critiques of it (something which rang true for many voters, too) was that it made the military weak. Iraq is not a war of conquest, really. It's a terrible travesty that was foisted on the American people in the hyper-nationalistic aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks, but Iraq will continue to be Iraq, run by Iraqis (at least the ones that are sensitive to US concerns in the region) and eventually left to its own devices. Make no mistake, by invading the country and having to remain there in the destabilized aftermath, the US has signed up for more than a decade of presence there, but we've had longer tenures in other (admittedly more friendly) nations and America will stick it out in Iraq, too.
Let me lay it out very clearly for you. Islamic terrorists run around blowing things up for one reason: because they read the Koran to say that anyone who is not a muslim, or anyone that associates with non-muslims is an infidel and must die. If they don't kill the infidels and the apostates that associate with them, they will not reach heaven, nor will anyone in their family. It's that simple, really. It's been going on since long before the US came into being. Israel gets socked because it's viewed as an imperialist occupier of muslim lands. This "One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" notion is the comfy pillow for people who do not want to call a spade a spade. It's a spade, my friend. It's not some altruistic vision that revealed itself to poor helpless people oppressed by America. More than half the 9-11 terrorists were Saudi -- rich people who don't work for a living and have never had want for anything. Same thing for the Cole attack in Yemen. Lost everything? Under threat? Bullshit.
Oh, by the way, the American Civil War was fought because close to half of the states of the union (those that happened to have the majority of the available coastline of the nation and more than half the arable land, it's worth noting) decided that they wanted to secede from the union because they wanted the freedom to own slaves and keep making money on the main trade good of cotton. The Union had an army and the Confederacy had an army. They were mustered and uniformed and drilled and fought most of their battles in the open, with faces uncovered. One side wanted free labor and little federal control and the other wanted unity as a single nation that would not enslave people. This simply does not even come close to the current situation the world faces against Islamic terrorism.
I loved this bit so much I had to dupe it:
"...being refused credit is a position where ones courage, attitude and honour comes under scrutiny."
What a pompous bucket of tripe! Being refused credit has nothing to do with any of those things. It's about the borrower's ability to pay back the debt in question in the given time period. There is always another lender, and the higher the rate of return (read: interest), the more attractive the loan becomes to entities that have the money. The American economy will have challenges, but remember this simple fact: if America goes down, everyone else goes with it... China, too, my friend. Japan had a pretty great economy going for awhile, there, and the ripple effects from its tanking are still being felt. If the same happened to America, the scale would be amazing. Be careful of your schadenfreude, you may find yourself more affected by American economic instability than you think.
There are some complexities that are getting missed in your assessment.
First, the US can't cut military spending by 90-95%. It's simply ridiculous to suggest. The US has so much infrastructure (both in-country and outside) that there's always a significant outlay of cash required to keep it running. The military's strategic and logistical partnerships with other nations span the globe. US bases overseas are part of the socioeconomic framework of the host countries. As much as American towns and cities resist the closure of bases, so do the communities overseas. In Germany, for example, US military bases provide a lot of economic stability and when these bases are closed (as is happening now in the current re-alignment), the effects are just as devastating as they are for American towns. Barber shops, hardware stores, furniture stores, construction firms, grocers, etc. all take a hit when, say, 20% of the town's population picks up and leaves. Also, the US military must have the best of every kind of system. Part of the problem with being the biggest and the strongest is that you have to maintain that state, which is costly. It's safe to say that the military-industrial complex is simply too large and too powerful, but they would not be that way if the US didn't require the best and most advanced equipment.
What I think you may be driving at is the cost of conflict, which is high in wartime. Regardless of where one stands on the reasons for conflict or their validity, Americans are bearing the overwhelming cost of current wartime activity. It's especially so in Iraq, and perhaps less so in Afghanistan, but that may reflect where the international community sees the greatest need. The US is not the only victim of Islamic terrorism, after all. What may also be adding to the current cost of conflict is that a sizable chunk of that money (~400 billion for Iraq so far) is being spent with contractors like Titan, Khaki, KBR (and other Halliburton subsidiaries), Triple Canopy, etc. Military contracts in wartime are not unusual by themselves, but this is the first war for the US in which the profits of contractors and suppliers have not been restricted and tax cuts have been permitted. Furthermore, the American citizenry has not been asked to sacrifice anything for the effort -- there's no draft, there is no rationing of fuel or foodstuffs, for example. If the revenue gets cut and the costs are magnified, the fiscal problem gets bigger.
The biggest piece of spending, apart from entitlements, goes to service the debt. That piece gets bigger and bigger every year. As it does, other spending gets squeezed out. Entitlements are ripe for squeezing, btw. You can short people on their entitlements, but you can't miss a debt payment.
As for China holding our debt, they're not alone. Lots of nations buy US treasury bonds. What's important to remember is that the US has a very diverse and powerful economy. Even though there is a lot of US paper around, China in particular still finds it wise to peg their curency against the dollar. Yes, there is the risk of interest rate hikes. However, China has no banking system, really -- not in a sense that any western nation would recognize. The national merchant/investment bank is a near-empty building that is staffed by a handful of people who are paid to sit at desks and do nothing. I saw a report on it about a month ago on 60 minutes. (I looked for a link but didn't find one, but you could probably buy the transcript.)
So, yeah the debt's a problem, but it's not quite so dire just yet. In 20 year's time, when the full weight of entitlements are felt and the current trends of the additional debt are played out, then it will be a crisis. Right now, America needs better fiscal leadership. Traditionally, that's been territory claimed by republicans, but it's safe to say that times have changed. I'm not happy with the current situation, either, but I'm optimistic about the prospects for a strong reaction against nonstop spending and war pr
Aaah. Memories.
I'd only add that the reason my dad had for not going with Linux was that he could not figure out how to install stuff. Having to use the command-line is a real pain-in-the-patootie for people like my pop. Now, to be fair, my dad was using card-stack programs for years before the PC came around (worked as an accountant at Control Data back in the 60s) and command-line tools for years once the chaplinesque PC hit the desktop, but he's become accustomed to the advances in simplification that GUI tools and abstractions provide.
His response amounts to "I'm too old to spend time figuring that stuff out. I spent weeks learning VisiCalc and look at what a waste of time that was. Windows runs excel, which is what me and everyone else at my company uses. When Linux runs excel and I don't have to learn a bunch of stupid commands to set it up and run it, I'll consider it."
Honestly, I think that Linux needs a lot of the conventional GUI abstractions (like "Add-Remove Programs") that Windows users have become used to in order to get people to switch. I also believe that most Windows users have had very little experience with open source tools and there's a certain amount of fright involved in going with something that has a brand but not a single company to back the brand up.
Still, there were some documents that did not look favorable to the client if you looked at them in one particular way or another. Had I gone ahead and copied these documents and released them to a reporter, I'd have been in serious hot water. Had I been so stupid as to leak company-confidental communications between 2 company lawyers (just as bad if not worse), I'd have been similarly charged, no doubt.
First, I was under a very restrictive non-disclosure agreement about talking about any pending litigation, confidential/privileged communications between our firm and the client, and all of the client's documents. (Incidentally, communications between a client's attys, whether they are the in-house general counsel or attys retained by the client or both, are the property of the client.) Once something's been filed in court, it's public record and anyone can look at it. If asked about what I was working on, I could describe general things, like "I'm working on the exhibits for some passive restraints litigation against Honda." or "I'm watching Failure Analysis and Sandia tip-up videos that might be used for some exhibits in a Ford rollover case.", but I could not go into detail. I could even name the case if I wanted to since the case is public record and anyone could look for it, but doing even that is probably poor form.
Second, once you take a document out of the firm, or share something with a third party that is unconnected to the case, you've just screwed yourself and the firm you work for. What client would want to retain such an undisciplined firm? It's in the client's interest to retain representation that is looking out for problem areas in their defense, and conscientous representation will advise the client about how to handle questionable evidence in such a way that the client can be seen in the best light possible. For a clerk to intercede on those discussions by publicizing the evidence in advance of trial is not only unprofessional, not only a breach of contract/agreement, but may also throw the whole case into jeopardy.
The fact is that he was a contractor who took privileged communications between Diebold attys and passed it along. I think the felony access charge sounds a bit over-the-top because he may have access to the communications as a part of regular duties, but the burglary and receiving stolen property charges sound like exactly what Jones Day would want him to be charged with. TFA does not say if the guy left or was fired from Jones Day or not, or what the timing was between when he worked at Jones Day and when he actually passed the documents on, but this would be a firing offense for sure, and probably a breach of the NDA he's sure to have signed.
I'll bet a plate of nachos that someone at Jones Day talked with someone at the DA's office about the thing and that because it's 1) serious enough of a thing to poison the judicial waters against Diebold in particular and 2) may lead to the poisoning of the judicial conditions for future defendants if let unprosecuted in this instance, that the DA has a real interest in taking it to court.
My main worry is that because more portable file formats (I'll take flat ASCII text!) won't be seen as enforceable given the whole DRM battle in films and music, that access to multiple, open publishing formats will be locked out. I'm all for hacks to get around temporary portability problems, but if Sony really wants to be the leader they need to open up the text publishing space (I'm not referring to films and music) to include all kinds of formats and cheapen the cost of the presentation hardware.
I confess that I don't know how to make the model pay, but I'm thinking about subscriptions. Yunno, you pay 50 quatloos for all, real-time access to the library of congress, and the ability to audit or buy any of the books recorded by it -- wirelessly, in your flying car. Text Service Providers could allow consumers to accumulate a digital library that would exist remotely but could be reproduced anywhere. The idea is that you pay for the rights, but the presentation of the content depends on your device and your ISP.
I just want lots of books to be free, personally, but if you have to pay for them, they should be so cheap and easy as a newspaper, and available everywhere. If I'm already paying for a cell phone that can display pages of colored text, I've got the paper and all I need is the content.
* sigh *
I've had mixed feelings about Sony hardware. What's been your experience?
Admittedly, the E-ink excerpt makes it seem like the article is a dupe, but it's not exactly so.
Apart from talking about E-ink, it does lay out a few possible reasons for why electronic books have not been adopted as quickly as MP3 players and Treo-Crackberries. The article, had you read it, also points out that the content problem (that is, there's so much more available in dead-tree form) is being chipped away at as new publishing models go mainstream at joints like Amazon. If Tim O'Reilly says that content has now reached a critical mass, I'm inclined to see the article more in the light of a broad update on progress in the electronic publishing part of consumer electronics.
Before I suffer the inevitable stinging, indignant and defensive retort by TMM (which I will wear as a badge of honor, as if I were kicked by the pope), I'd like to point out that the Businessweek reader is not cut from the same cloth as the slashdot crowd. Yup, we've been attuned to the technical developments for a long time, so it's not "News for nerds", really. What I think we can take from it is that the over-hype of e-books 3-5 years ago (that which exposed just how feeble a publishing medium it was with the technology of the time) faded away and out of consumer consciousness only to now reappear with more strength. The conditions are different, now, and the casual Businessweek reader is hearing about it.
The first e-book I read was Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown", and I picked it up because it was free and I could get the reader very easily for my now-antiquated Palm IIIe. The issue that #1) didn't get covered in TFA and #2) I believe to be the unspoken greater barrier to adoption than the electronic device/technology that displays the text, is the issue of file formats. Sony, as TFA tells us, is leaping into e-books now that there is e-ink, and you can bet that Sony's e-books will come in their own proprietary e-format, and will be only e-readable by their devices. I would e-hope that e-book device and e-content distributors can e-agree that they'll support multiple e-file formats and e-reading software.
While I have e-hope, I'm pretty sure I'm e-smoking e-crack on that one.
God, I hate those freakin' "e-" prefixes. I swore I'd never use them and Businessweek made me do it.
I loved my Osborne. I kept it and used it almost all the way through college, through about 1991, when I got an IBM PS2.
Great programs on the Osborne (CP/M): Microsoft BASIC, WordStar, CBASIC, Mychess, Invaders, and Microsoft Adventure (You are at Witt's End. Passages extend in all directions.) I wrote a number of different wrappers to ease my way through CP/M. At one point, I had emulated the command-line of the Apple ][+ so that my Apple-based pals could have an easier time with old Ozzie.
The Ozzie taught me a lot -- I learned how to make the proprietary cables that went with it (you can't buy 'em anymore and they were hard to find even a matter of years after Osbornes hit the marketplace).
I can't imagine what the thing cost my dad, but it was a great little machine. My ex-wife made me get rid of it many years ago -- a decision I have regretted ever since.
+sniffle+