Tinkering and coming up with cool (if impractical) uses... and quite frankly, that's what computing has lost over the years... Doing strange crap with the user port of your C-64 was damn fun, IMNSHO.
But I still don't want to throw away money on a game that won't ever materialize.
Neither do most of us (it is a gamble, no matter how hard we try)... but I tend to stick to the established guys (like Wasteland 2) so I have at least a better than 50/50 shot of getting good stuff.
The Committee on Science, Space and Technology has about as much to do with science as the Book of Genesis does with explaining the origin of the universe. It's a POLITICAL committee.. it is motivated by cash. Period. Just like all other committees. Democrats/Republicans/"Independents"... they're all cash hungry. That's it. I wish it were better, but it isn't. The one or two representatives and senators who understand the Internet and aren't in the back pockets of the *AAs are not connected enough to get on a committee...
Will the world return to flat earth belief and a desire to return to the moon for the cheese? No. Will scientists be burned at the stake? No. It's the HOUSE committee... there's still a SENATE committee... and well, the other guys who have that chamber aren't that much better.... but the planet will not implode and we won't be demon hunting in New Jersey because Lamar Smith railroaded a law through that claims all able bodied individuals must go on witch-hunts twice a year or be fined $500.
He's a politician. He'll sabotage whatever he's paid most to sabotage. It's not unique to Lamar (who is a jackoff in his own right)... it's how politicians work. Make no bones about it, even if he was a proponent of sending all the Oil companies into space and using nothing but solar power, he'll STILL go to the highest bidder.
In other words.. this is MOTS... regardless of party... Anyone who's been awake for the last 4 years can realize now that there isn't a two party system anymore in the US.
I'm certain it's because you keep the same level of livid hatred for Linux in every post that criticized windows (fanboy criticisms or not). You even dismiss the SecureBoot crap as some sort of "so? I don't care".... Firstly, it's your PC, why should someone be the gatekeeper for what OS you want to install on it? They keep the keys in ARM, and let's see how long it takes before they do the same in x86... because quite frankly you hit the nail on the head when you said the monopoly sanctions are over... so MS can go back to being their pre-conviction selves... and lockdown x86 secureboot keys.
Plus the righteous anger thing is tired. Really really tired. I hope you get paid for your defense of Microsoft and derision of Linux... Yes, we have heard 120 times that you hate Windows 8 Metro. You still love the company that made it it seems. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I think I'll take your sig's advice and ignore the trolls.
Even WGA allows "non-genuine" copies of Windows to continue functioning
For a certain number of boots, certailnly. Like the Windows 7 beta that logged you out after an hour (after it expired).... it isn't always "nice".... (WGA or Microsoft, that is....)
Riddle me this..is there an EASY way to restore one of those INI files if it gets fucked?
Glad you asked. Vim uses a backup file when you edit with it. Just be sure you don't turn that feature off...
myconfigfile.txt myconfigfile.txt~
You keep bringing up the same website... like I said in another thread... some of those things that are considered "show stoppers" are not so much show-stoppers but "show stoppers who expect Linux to run exactly like Windows". True sentiment, if that's what you want out of Linux.. but most of us don't. That ship has sailed... and god forbid someone at Gnome or Trolltech makes a "Metro-alike" WM....:)
While Windows 7 was a vast improvement in many ways from the "open beta" that was Vista, Microsoft still has quite a few early design decisions that haunt them. I often wonder about how the Registry improves from release to release (it was a fairly crappy way of configuring the OS back in XP), but quite frankly the Registry itself is one of the things I loathe about Windows in the first place. But that's just me.
But to say that MSFT can't write a good OS is just the height of arrogance, its elitist horseshit to make little nerds feel good about themselves
What's funny is not that you bristle at the opinion, but that anyone's opinion that Microsoft can't do X or shouldn't do Y is somehow "elitist" horseshit. Sure the opinion was dripping with one poster's view of what makes a good OS, but the fact remains Microsoft has given us some massive turds in the history of Windows. The fact that they appear to have gotten it right with Windows 7 is not reinforced by the massive UI shift to leverage their Windows codebase into the smartphone market in Windows 8. And you agree with most of the rest of/. that the Metro UI is positively junk. It is showing the true nature of what a company searching for relevance in a changing technology climate can do, given enough money and micromanagement. (It could be any company, not just Microsoft...)
What I cannot dismiss, and I do not believe is a fault of poor coding but more succinctly Microsoft's disdain for its customers, is the constant upheaval in Office file formats, phone home DRM, and an otherwise high regard for the *AA's built into the core OS in order to please them. I won't go into detail about that here, because it's been covered on/. umpteen times, but that nonsense alone has made me hate Microsoft at a basic level. Their culture, like Apple's, is one of contempt for the user's freedom to do what they wish with their purchased machine. The SecureBoot fiasco is just another in a long list of crimes. I say crimes, because frankly they were convicted of abusing monopoly power. That wasn't a witch hunt, like some contend. It was exposing the true nature of Microsoft, as reflected in their management. Rather like Jobs' personality and vision is reflected in Apple's walled garden and sealed computers (laptops in particular, but you can also point to the recent iMacs as another in a long line of removing freedom from the user...) I think we can both agree that Microsoft and Apple are one in the same when it comes to putting their goals of lock-in well above making good, solid OSes that get out of the way and let people be, well, people.
Jobs was a designer. That is why Apple's products are designed so well, and because they are designed so well, they are really easy to market. You just have to show the product and people buy. That is not true of Apple's competitors.
Jonathan Ive would like to have a word with you on that.... Jobs was smart enough to hire Ive....
If people were indeed "confused" by Samsung's devices and thought they were iPhones, wouldn't there be a mass return to the store when they found out it wasn't an iPhone? I don't give the great unwashed much credit, but in this case you've just made everyone who bought a Samsung phone out to be a dupe who got suckered into Samsung's "Apple Trap" and are too clueless to know the difference...
Apple went after Samsung because Samsung is the #1 vendor of Android devices. The fact that the jury's verdict was in question because the foreman acted improperly just goes to show you that there are people who will side with one or the other no matter what. And it also undercuts the complexity of patents and electronics that most jurors are not equipped to handle... (Oh and Apple lost their suit in Korea... go figure.)
Is for her to get into an armed robbery attempt to recover her sports memorabilia and she'll be doing time for what she deserves.:) Hope it doesn't take too long, though.
so go back to jerking over a Bash script FOSSie, nobody wants your shitty OS nor cares, BTW how is the marketshare? oh that is right..its been flatline for years. could it be the fact that even a Red hat dev says its a disaster
Not to pick nits (and I am not defending any "FOSSies" here), but the Red Hat developer said (in the second part of his post on the subject) that the reason Linux is losing the desktop is because it's "not free enough".... Ironically, in the discussion below, lots of interesting ideas come from the comments... Of course there is the "has to be as good a Windows as Windows" comment thread that seems to be the prevailing thought about Linux and its success on the desktop. Truthfully, OS/2 was a "Better Windows than Windows"... before Windows 95... and it really didn't take off, because Windows had become "familiar", and most people who view computers as temperamental toasters don't embrace change very easily.
I contend that Linux shouldn't become "just like Windows"... it should be something different. It works great for me, because I don't care about interoperability with Windows. My computers that do run Windows do so only because I play some old Windows games on them that I haven't bothered to get running under Wine (nor need to, considering the Windows XP PC I have cost me $35.)
Some of the legacy cruft should be shrugged off... but with the intense pressure Microsoft (and Apple) put on hardware makers to keep "their" OSes the only one in town, we cannot be certain that we'll get decent day 1 hardware support from new video cards, etc. It doesn't affect me at all, considering my "current" video card is over three years old, but only cost me $19 on eBay.
What I think is trending here in technology is a platform agnostic sort of vibe from the general public. They no longer focus on "does it run Windows?" but if it runs their Angry Birds or Words with Friends... or can they get on Facebook to play more farmville (etc. etc.) So if we were to package Linux as a platform, rather than an alternative to windows... so that Ma and Pa Kettle can check their email, share pictures, watch youtube videos and video chat with their grandkids... they wouldn't give two monkeys if it was Linux or Windows... the brand isn't the problem anymore... Microsoft knows that, because the foisted their phone OS onto the desktop... (Trying to be "platform agnostic" without actually doing it correctly, IMO.)
As for the other criticisms (2012 edition)... some are valid... but some I would point back to the "better windows than windows" trap... And some are just pointless until we get the basic tenet figured out that it should be a platform rather than an "alternative to windows." My 67 year old father uses Ubuntu and has no trouble uploading pictures from his digital camera, searching and surfing his favorite sites, emailing his buddies, and playing his favorite solitaire games. He doesn't care that it isn't windows. Most people wouldn't if given the chance. That's where the platform agnosticism comes in... Beating Microsoft at being Microsoft is impossible. Linux failed to do that... and I for one am glad it did, because the reason I switched to Linux permanently was because I was tired of Windows. (Of course according to Microsoft's sales figures, my Dell PC counts as a "sale" of Windows 7, even though it was wiped before first boot when I unpacked it.) YMMV, no warranties expressed or implied, may cause acne, erectile dysfunction, nausea, heart palpitations, unexplained skin growth, hives, and herpes.
Not to mention *I* pay for the bandwidth. If I want to block ads to save money on my bandwidth costs, I can. I get up when a commercial comes on TV (to take a leak, etc.) and I fast forward through commercials on DVR. I don't watch commercials... so I don't have to read ads online (I don't read ads in my newspaper either.) So how is this "against the law" again? Advertisers can eat a dick. There are enough people viewing ads that they aren't losing money. The fact that they can't "make bank" on my viewing habits is too fucking bad.
The problem is indeed getting worse, and it's due to the exclusion of "emerging markets" doing the exact same thing the West did during the Industrial Revolution. We should stop focusing on energy consumption and focus on getting different forms of energy. Stop the wannabes from using 50 year old data to support a ban on Nuclear Power.... stop letting every rich idiot (*cough* TED KENNEDY *cough*) block windfarms because it spoils their view of the ocean.
I thought about this the other night while eating Cheetos. The state, local, and Federal government need to swap their auto/truck/equipment fleets to compressed hydrogen or natural gas. All of those vehicles operate in a small radius with a motorpool (centralized fueling is easy for them)... Ditch the diesel... lead by example for a change. It's not going to interrupt the market if they do this. Encourage contractors who get sweet government contracts to buy into the hydrogen/natural gas machinery route. Will it be cost effective at first? No, but when has the government (at any level) been frugal and good, hell even mediocre at planning and budgeting. Then as the market for natural gas compressed hydrogen vehicles spreads beyond the government, the market will start supporting them with more fueling stations and before you know it, we're not using gasoline anymore. Once we stop that, we can tell the Middle East to suck it... move out and let them fight over the 3 or 4 bits of market for their fossil fuel left. The United States produces enough oil and petroleum products, if we stop using gasoline, to manufacture in-house all the other items that require those products (plastics, etc.) As we stop moving towards oil, we can stop propping up coal. Then we translate coal into solar and/or nuclear through customer demand for it. When the market gets competitive (and the entrenched don't get handouts from the government) things will shift. They always do. Fits and starts at first, of course... but once it starts... it'll change the landscape of the United States forever.
Then we will be TRULY energy independent and will not need the Middle East, China, or anyone else to keep our economy moving. Perhaps that would generate a 2nd Renaissance of American economic freedom and influence that tugs the rest of the world into the 21st century and beyond. We'll look back on this as a blip in the otherwise fantastic progress the 20th Century started... and by the 22nd century, the fossils will be only in museums and we'll have our goddamned flying cars!:)
I think that's why resumes and questionnaires should be kept at a gender/race neutral level until a decision is made. Just like college applications. Don't show names/races/genders. Just look at the raw data. Submit questions in writing (email works too) and when the decision is made, THEN you get to find out what color/gender the applicant is. The barriers would be nonexistent, and Affirmative Action can die a quick, needed death.
By the way, your vagina's pretty much a complicated maze of intricacies... an enigma wrapped in a puzzle dipped in secret sauce to most geeks. So the concern is more of the unknown than the vagina itself. Rather like flight to the first passengers on a plane.:) They weren't necessarily afraid of the plane.. just flying in general.
Hooray for boobies! (I just thought I'd throw that in there...)
Yeah, because I hate wine and really can't stand most "sophisticated" cheeses. I do like topless beaches, but I prefer shaved pits and manicured carpet... And as for their shitty cars... France can have them.
The compromise to "indirect" election of the President (some delegates wanted the Congress to appoint a President), probably had a little to do with the State Legislatures picking Senators (because they get to pick the electors)... I don't know if that's significant or a coincidence... However, the direct election of Senators was a Progressive idea, because of all the trouble the State legislatures had at actually picking two senators. I forget which amendment changed it (and I can't find my damn pocket Constitution)...
Electioneering aside, the Senate sometimes votes with a Statewide minded agenda (whatever that's worth these days) and it is generally the barrier against stupid shit like flag burning legislation, MLK holiday week, or birth certificate inquiries. I wonder if the Special Interests (that seem to drive all politicians) would've had much traction if they were appointed. Surely, there'd be a financial disincentive to have 50 lobbyists per state when came time for state legislatures to appoint senators. They are slow to approve legislation, which is their purpose... and they generally get compromise within the two houses... (unless it's a total fuckfest like the PATRIOT Act...) Additionally, they are slower to change power structure than the House, which goes quicker because of the 2 year cycle. It seems people are more rational voting for senators (FWIW)... well, for the most part.
I've often wondered (Really can't stand Progressive ideas... they're neither beneficial or Progressive in my mind) that if the State Legislatures hadn't mucked shit up so badly, they wouldn't have had such a welcome voting public willing to amend the Constitution. I think (as I mentioned above) that lobbying would be harder to do with the Senate not being elected by popular vote.
It doesn't matter anyway... the average person isn't represented at the Federal level... barely at the state level... and it's hit or miss at the local municipal level.
I'd rather have gridlock than yet more Constitution raping legislation like the NDAA or the PATRIOT ACT... or hell, SOPA. We have to be hyper-vigilant or we'll get a huge shit sandwich like the DMCA.
And The Affordable Health Care Act missed the point... vouchers out the wazoo, fundamental things that are supposed to control costs are going to make them go up, and the fact that the government can fine you for not buying healthcare. Oh, sorry.. TAX you. That was a really wonderful bunch of legislation... it really was. Oh, and before everyone jumps in and says "Oh the Republicans watered it down" they didn't... it's all horseshit anyway. (I am not defending either party... they both suck major ass.)
Slashdot Mirror
The USB doesn't even work properly on the full fledged model
They fixed it in the latest release... I have tried it with the new ISO... works great. :)
Tinkering and coming up with cool (if impractical) uses... and quite frankly, that's what computing has lost over the years... Doing strange crap with the user port of your C-64 was damn fun, IMNSHO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5npkz0xY1fo
Thanks to the Pi for bringing that tinkering fun back....
Man, you must be dead inside... :)
But I still don't want to throw away money on a game that won't ever materialize.
Neither do most of us (it is a gamble, no matter how hard we try)... but I tend to stick to the established guys (like Wasteland 2) so I have at least a better than 50/50 shot of getting good stuff.
I also think this is great... :)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cheapassgames/unexploded-cow-from-cheapass-games
The Committee on Science, Space and Technology has about as much to do with science as the Book of Genesis does with explaining the origin of the universe. It's a POLITICAL committee.. it is motivated by cash. Period. Just like all other committees. Democrats/Republicans/"Independents"... they're all cash hungry. That's it. I wish it were better, but it isn't. The one or two representatives and senators who understand the Internet and aren't in the back pockets of the *AAs are not connected enough to get on a committee...
Will the world return to flat earth belief and a desire to return to the moon for the cheese? No. Will scientists be burned at the stake? No. It's the HOUSE committee... there's still a SENATE committee... and well, the other guys who have that chamber aren't that much better.... but the planet will not implode and we won't be demon hunting in New Jersey because Lamar Smith railroaded a law through that claims all able bodied individuals must go on witch-hunts twice a year or be fined $500.
He's a politician. He'll sabotage whatever he's paid most to sabotage. It's not unique to Lamar (who is a jackoff in his own right)... it's how politicians work. Make no bones about it, even if he was a proponent of sending all the Oil companies into space and using nothing but solar power, he'll STILL go to the highest bidder.
In other words.. this is MOTS... regardless of party... Anyone who's been awake for the last 4 years can realize now that there isn't a two party system anymore in the US.
You really have to cut out the caffeine. It's doing a number on your nerves.
I'm certain it's because you keep the same level of livid hatred for Linux in every post that criticized windows (fanboy criticisms or not). You even dismiss the SecureBoot crap as some sort of "so? I don't care".... Firstly, it's your PC, why should someone be the gatekeeper for what OS you want to install on it? They keep the keys in ARM, and let's see how long it takes before they do the same in x86... because quite frankly you hit the nail on the head when you said the monopoly sanctions are over... so MS can go back to being their pre-conviction selves... and lockdown x86 secureboot keys.
Plus the righteous anger thing is tired. Really really tired. I hope you get paid for your defense of Microsoft and derision of Linux... Yes, we have heard 120 times that you hate Windows 8 Metro. You still love the company that made it it seems. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I think I'll take your sig's advice and ignore the trolls.
Even WGA allows "non-genuine" copies of Windows to continue functioning
For a certain number of boots, certailnly. Like the Windows 7 beta that logged you out after an hour (after it expired).... it isn't always "nice".... (WGA or Microsoft, that is....)
Riddle me this..is there an EASY way to restore one of those INI files if it gets fucked?
Glad you asked. Vim uses a backup file when you edit with it. Just be sure you don't turn that feature off...
myconfigfile.txt
myconfigfile.txt~
You keep bringing up the same website... like I said in another thread... some of those things that are considered "show stoppers" are not so much show-stoppers but "show stoppers who expect Linux to run exactly like Windows". True sentiment, if that's what you want out of Linux.. but most of us don't. That ship has sailed... and god forbid someone at Gnome or Trolltech makes a "Metro-alike" WM.... :)
No... SecureBoot is not a crime. Keeping the keys for signing OSes from the owner of the computer is.
While Windows 7 was a vast improvement in many ways from the "open beta" that was Vista, Microsoft still has quite a few early design decisions that haunt them. I often wonder about how the Registry improves from release to release (it was a fairly crappy way of configuring the OS back in XP), but quite frankly the Registry itself is one of the things I loathe about Windows in the first place. But that's just me.
But to say that MSFT can't write a good OS is just the height of arrogance, its elitist horseshit to make little nerds feel good about themselves
What's funny is not that you bristle at the opinion, but that anyone's opinion that Microsoft can't do X or shouldn't do Y is somehow "elitist" horseshit. Sure the opinion was dripping with one poster's view of what makes a good OS, but the fact remains Microsoft has given us some massive turds in the history of Windows. The fact that they appear to have gotten it right with Windows 7 is not reinforced by the massive UI shift to leverage their Windows codebase into the smartphone market in Windows 8. And you agree with most of the rest of /. that the Metro UI is positively junk. It is showing the true nature of what a company searching for relevance in a changing technology climate can do, given enough money and micromanagement. (It could be any company, not just Microsoft...)
What I cannot dismiss, and I do not believe is a fault of poor coding but more succinctly Microsoft's disdain for its customers, is the constant upheaval in Office file formats, phone home DRM, and an otherwise high regard for the *AA's built into the core OS in order to please them. I won't go into detail about that here, because it's been covered on /. umpteen times, but that nonsense alone has made me hate Microsoft at a basic level. Their culture, like Apple's, is one of contempt for the user's freedom to do what they wish with their purchased machine. The SecureBoot fiasco is just another in a long list of crimes. I say crimes, because frankly they were convicted of abusing monopoly power. That wasn't a witch hunt, like some contend. It was exposing the true nature of Microsoft, as reflected in their management. Rather like Jobs' personality and vision is reflected in Apple's walled garden and sealed computers (laptops in particular, but you can also point to the recent iMacs as another in a long line of removing freedom from the user...) I think we can both agree that Microsoft and Apple are one in the same when it comes to putting their goals of lock-in well above making good, solid OSes that get out of the way and let people be, well, people.
Jobs was a designer. That is why Apple's products are designed so well, and because they are designed so well, they are really easy to market. You just have to show the product and people buy. That is not true of Apple's competitors.
Jonathan Ive would like to have a word with you on that.... Jobs was smart enough to hire Ive....
If people were indeed "confused" by Samsung's devices and thought they were iPhones, wouldn't there be a mass return to the store when they found out it wasn't an iPhone? I don't give the great unwashed much credit, but in this case you've just made everyone who bought a Samsung phone out to be a dupe who got suckered into Samsung's "Apple Trap" and are too clueless to know the difference...
Apple went after Samsung because Samsung is the #1 vendor of Android devices. The fact that the jury's verdict was in question because the foreman acted improperly just goes to show you that there are people who will side with one or the other no matter what. And it also undercuts the complexity of patents and electronics that most jurors are not equipped to handle... (Oh and Apple lost their suit in Korea... go figure.)
Is for her to get into an armed robbery attempt to recover her sports memorabilia and she'll be doing time for what she deserves. :) Hope it doesn't take too long, though.
Not to pick nits (and I am not defending any "FOSSies" here), but the Red Hat developer said (in the second part of his post on the subject) that the reason Linux is losing the desktop is because it's "not free enough".... Ironically, in the discussion below, lots of interesting ideas come from the comments... Of course there is the "has to be as good a Windows as Windows" comment thread that seems to be the prevailing thought about Linux and its success on the desktop. Truthfully, OS/2 was a "Better Windows than Windows"... before Windows 95... and it really didn't take off, because Windows had become "familiar", and most people who view computers as temperamental toasters don't embrace change very easily.
I contend that Linux shouldn't become "just like Windows"... it should be something different. It works great for me, because I don't care about interoperability with Windows. My computers that do run Windows do so only because I play some old Windows games on them that I haven't bothered to get running under Wine (nor need to, considering the Windows XP PC I have cost me $35.)
Some of the legacy cruft should be shrugged off... but with the intense pressure Microsoft (and Apple) put on hardware makers to keep "their" OSes the only one in town, we cannot be certain that we'll get decent day 1 hardware support from new video cards, etc. It doesn't affect me at all, considering my "current" video card is over three years old, but only cost me $19 on eBay.
What I think is trending here in technology is a platform agnostic sort of vibe from the general public. They no longer focus on "does it run Windows?" but if it runs their Angry Birds or Words with Friends... or can they get on Facebook to play more farmville (etc. etc.) So if we were to package Linux as a platform, rather than an alternative to windows... so that Ma and Pa Kettle can check their email, share pictures, watch youtube videos and video chat with their grandkids... they wouldn't give two monkeys if it was Linux or Windows... the brand isn't the problem anymore... Microsoft knows that, because the foisted their phone OS onto the desktop... (Trying to be "platform agnostic" without actually doing it correctly, IMO.)
As for the other criticisms (2012 edition)... some are valid... but some I would point back to the "better windows than windows" trap... And some are just pointless until we get the basic tenet figured out that it should be a platform rather than an "alternative to windows." My 67 year old father uses Ubuntu and has no trouble uploading pictures from his digital camera, searching and surfing his favorite sites, emailing his buddies, and playing his favorite solitaire games. He doesn't care that it isn't windows. Most people wouldn't if given the chance. That's where the platform agnosticism comes in... Beating Microsoft at being Microsoft is impossible. Linux failed to do that... and I for one am glad it did, because the reason I switched to Linux permanently was because I was tired of Windows. (Of course according to Microsoft's sales figures, my Dell PC counts as a "sale" of Windows 7, even though it was wiped before first boot when I unpacked it.) YMMV, no warranties expressed or implied, may cause acne, erectile dysfunction, nausea, heart palpitations, unexplained skin growth, hives, and herpes.
Not to mention *I* pay for the bandwidth. If I want to block ads to save money on my bandwidth costs, I can. I get up when a commercial comes on TV (to take a leak, etc.) and I fast forward through commercials on DVR. I don't watch commercials... so I don't have to read ads online (I don't read ads in my newspaper either.) So how is this "against the law" again? Advertisers can eat a dick. There are enough people viewing ads that they aren't losing money. The fact that they can't "make bank" on my viewing habits is too fucking bad.
Actually home invasion makes me think of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faML0QvVb2A
You might want to see how far back the phrase goes before trying to turn it into a political bunch of nonsense.
The problem is indeed getting worse, and it's due to the exclusion of "emerging markets" doing the exact same thing the West did during the Industrial Revolution. We should stop focusing on energy consumption and focus on getting different forms of energy. Stop the wannabes from using 50 year old data to support a ban on Nuclear Power.... stop letting every rich idiot (*cough* TED KENNEDY *cough*) block windfarms because it spoils their view of the ocean.
I thought about this the other night while eating Cheetos. The state, local, and Federal government need to swap their auto/truck/equipment fleets to compressed hydrogen or natural gas. All of those vehicles operate in a small radius with a motorpool (centralized fueling is easy for them)... Ditch the diesel... lead by example for a change. It's not going to interrupt the market if they do this. Encourage contractors who get sweet government contracts to buy into the hydrogen/natural gas machinery route. Will it be cost effective at first? No, but when has the government (at any level) been frugal and good, hell even mediocre at planning and budgeting. Then as the market for natural gas compressed hydrogen vehicles spreads beyond the government, the market will start supporting them with more fueling stations and before you know it, we're not using gasoline anymore. Once we stop that, we can tell the Middle East to suck it... move out and let them fight over the 3 or 4 bits of market for their fossil fuel left. The United States produces enough oil and petroleum products, if we stop using gasoline, to manufacture in-house all the other items that require those products (plastics, etc.) As we stop moving towards oil, we can stop propping up coal. Then we translate coal into solar and/or nuclear through customer demand for it. When the market gets competitive (and the entrenched don't get handouts from the government) things will shift. They always do. Fits and starts at first, of course... but once it starts... it'll change the landscape of the United States forever.
Then we will be TRULY energy independent and will not need the Middle East, China, or anyone else to keep our economy moving. Perhaps that would generate a 2nd Renaissance of American economic freedom and influence that tugs the rest of the world into the 21st century and beyond. We'll look back on this as a blip in the otherwise fantastic progress the 20th Century started... and by the 22nd century, the fossils will be only in museums and we'll have our goddamned flying cars! :)
Well put. Jefferson was in favor of a revolution now and again... in fact, he called for it when that government no longer represented the People.
Freedom isn't free. It cost's about a $1.05....
I think that's why resumes and questionnaires should be kept at a gender/race neutral level until a decision is made. Just like college applications. Don't show names/races/genders. Just look at the raw data. Submit questions in writing (email works too) and when the decision is made, THEN you get to find out what color/gender the applicant is. The barriers would be nonexistent, and Affirmative Action can die a quick, needed death.
By the way, your vagina's pretty much a complicated maze of intricacies... an enigma wrapped in a puzzle dipped in secret sauce to most geeks. So the concern is more of the unknown than the vagina itself. Rather like flight to the first passengers on a plane. :) They weren't necessarily afraid of the plane.. just flying in general.
Hooray for boobies! (I just thought I'd throw that in there...)
Yeah, because I hate wine and really can't stand most "sophisticated" cheeses. I do like topless beaches, but I prefer shaved pits and manicured carpet... And as for their shitty cars... France can have them.
The compromise to "indirect" election of the President (some delegates wanted the Congress to appoint a President), probably had a little to do with the State Legislatures picking Senators (because they get to pick the electors)... I don't know if that's significant or a coincidence... However, the direct election of Senators was a Progressive idea, because of all the trouble the State legislatures had at actually picking two senators. I forget which amendment changed it (and I can't find my damn pocket Constitution)...
Electioneering aside, the Senate sometimes votes with a Statewide minded agenda (whatever that's worth these days) and it is generally the barrier against stupid shit like flag burning legislation, MLK holiday week, or birth certificate inquiries. I wonder if the Special Interests (that seem to drive all politicians) would've had much traction if they were appointed. Surely, there'd be a financial disincentive to have 50 lobbyists per state when came time for state legislatures to appoint senators. They are slow to approve legislation, which is their purpose... and they generally get compromise within the two houses... (unless it's a total fuckfest like the PATRIOT Act...) Additionally, they are slower to change power structure than the House, which goes quicker because of the 2 year cycle. It seems people are more rational voting for senators (FWIW)... well, for the most part.
I've often wondered (Really can't stand Progressive ideas... they're neither beneficial or Progressive in my mind) that if the State Legislatures hadn't mucked shit up so badly, they wouldn't have had such a welcome voting public willing to amend the Constitution. I think (as I mentioned above) that lobbying would be harder to do with the Senate not being elected by popular vote.
It doesn't matter anyway... the average person isn't represented at the Federal level... barely at the state level... and it's hit or miss at the local municipal level.
I'd rather have gridlock than yet more Constitution raping legislation like the NDAA or the PATRIOT ACT... or hell, SOPA. We have to be hyper-vigilant or we'll get a huge shit sandwich like the DMCA.
And The Affordable Health Care Act missed the point... vouchers out the wazoo, fundamental things that are supposed to control costs are going to make them go up, and the fact that the government can fine you for not buying healthcare. Oh, sorry.. TAX you. That was a really wonderful bunch of legislation... it really was. Oh, and before everyone jumps in and says "Oh the Republicans watered it down" they didn't... it's all horseshit anyway. (I am not defending either party... they both suck major ass.)