I suspect that this is exactly what this experiment is designed to accomplish.
If you can eliminiate the need for a fission primary, it becomes feasible to test core compression theories, enabling designers to produce more efficient fusion devices; smaller, higher yield, and perhaps consuming less material.
The heats and pressures required to light the fusion fire are created quite frequently in accelerators, but I don't see them as being practical on a "working man's" scale.
It'd be fun to have one, that's for sure. Though I bet that their power bill leaves a little bit to be desired.
I also love how there's a biting qualifier to each entry:
"Killed Defenseless Indians" "Killed War Veterans" "Returned Dictator to power"
No bias there, eh?
I submit that the US is in good company here... take a look at the UN web http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/index.asp site, and do a little research. Figure out which contries have seen UN "occupation" and "regime change" and ask yourself if the people in those countries are any better off because of it.
You'd be interested to see that the UN's involvement in peace keeping efforts have regularly grown in magnitude (in sizes of forces deployed); yet have infrequently solved the crises that they are supposedly there to address.
They frequently leave these places in worse ways then they found them, yet no one shouts that they "Hate Kofi" and that he's an idiot.
You big bean-eatin double-standard-havin' goal-post-moving whiners.
With the resounding success of the attempt to ban the exportation of encryption technology; why do the powers that be think that the banning of the importation of decryption will be any more successfull?
The beauty here is that there are more smart people like this feller outside, than there are smart people inside companies (like Sony, and others) that believe that they can hide bits that are destined to huge audiences.
I personally think that they are trying to drive the consumer back into the theater, where they can make fat cash off of stale popcorn and swimming pool sized soda sales.
Our first toddler steps toward the Butlerian Jihad.
10,000 years from now, when the remaining humans destroy the last thinking machine overmind, it will topple, revealing a "Made in Japan" sticker. Way to go Sony!
There's one thing that you have to say about Republican administration. They very rarely have to come up with a "front" initiative to mask defense spending.
The firm belief, that because and individual has the cognitive capacity to figure out a solution, that that solution is superior to all others.
Has it really taken this long to identify this problem among the Open Source Community?
OSS is most often developed as a response to a need or a desire by a technically adept individual or group of individuals.
I think of it as the "There's-more-than-one-way-to-skin-a-yak-but-this- one-works-for-me" Syndrome.
I have a problem, and I can solve this problem. I don't want to solve it over and over again, and I don't want to pay someone else to do it. I think solving this problem would be cool. Sometimes, and I do mean sometimes, I have an idea to solve a problem that no one else has even thought of yet.
I write some code. The code is good; it does what I want it to do. I don't need to document the arcane way it does what I want it to do, because I wrote it. I know what all the variables do. I know the string manipulation algorithms. I understand the connection sequences, and where all the configuration files go.
All is good in my world.
I have proven, once again, that carbon is smarter than silicon, and my carbon is smarter than most other people's carbon.
This may make it cryptic and cumbersome to others. So be it. To some extent, deep down inside, I am proud of this.
It's equal or better than any work Microsoft, or Symantec, or Cisco, or.. or.. or.. whoever could have done.
It's better because "I" made it, and "I" understand it.
Fast Forward
"Hey, look at my code, isn't it cool? It runs faster and smarter than other code like it, and it never crashes. Well, yeah, it's kind of a bitch to install, but it will solve that pesky problem you have with X. And it's FREE! Yeah, check it out, lets install it on your machine. You got a couple hours?"
"Well, yeah, you could just install Windows... Yeah, that is easier to do, but that costs MONEY! And it doesn't do all the cool things that mine does! Yeah, well, they do have support, but don't you understand that this is FREE! Didn't I tell you it's better too? I included a FAQ and a Readme file, what else do you want? Oh. Simplicity, well, that's fine and dandy, but wouldn't you feel better, knowing that you're running better software than the rest of the cattle? No, you wouldn't eh?"
"Feh! Who needs you... Go suck up to some corporate greed-mongering capitalist innovation wrecker. It's people like you that keep people like me from writing the GOOD software."
Can you taste the irony?
It seems to me quite obvious.
We need an OSS InstallShield. Not a package manager, not "tar -xvzf", and certainly not "make menuconfig\make dep\make clean\make zlilo\make install\reboot".
We need a tool that your AFR (Average F*ing Retard) can run and install software. Sure, that takes the elitism out of being able to run our OSS, but we will kick the piss out of the "pay me for crap" crowd.
At least I know, as an elitist, that people are stupid, and they're just never gonna get it.
Based on the number of quarters that I recall shoveling into Asteroids, Berserker, Joust, Defender, and Space Invaders games in the 80s, there's no way they could have run out yet.
Plus, since I missed so much school, they probably have my engineering degree in a closet someplace.
Why do you infer that it is only possible that the REPUBLICANS would rig an election?
Are you implying that they are less ethical and more intelligent, and that they are the only party with the technical capacity and motivation to do so? Where do you come up with these facts that on which you base these gross inferences?
Last time I checked, these were the facts that I know:
1. Color me cynical, but all people are garbage. 2. All politicians are people. 3. Ergo, all politicians are garbage.
Or are you implying that Republicans would be the only party that would need to rig an election?
The last time I listened to the pundits, the common thought was that the reason that Kerry is gaining so much support in the caucuses was because he is perceived to be the only candidate that can truly compete with GWB.
If GWB is such a lackluster, painful, and heinous President and is so universally reviled, even that block of wood, Al Gore, should be able to beat him. Oh, wait.
All this implies a certain sense of inferiority for ALL of the Democrat candidates, and if that's the perception, wouldn't it be safe to admit that they would have just as much motivation to "cheat"?
The reason that this argument falls apart is as follows:
If the "powers that be" can ticket you everytime you speed, people will stop speeding.
If they find a way to guarantee that a file that is shared across a network violates copyright, and prosecute (read: fine) the persons involved in the transmission of the file, people will stop trading copyrighted material.
I, for one believe, however, that a small percentage of users will always remain smarter than the folks trying to prevent promiscious copyright violations. They will create tools (like this) and will distribute/sell them to the rest of the not so smart folks.
The way to stop illegal copying of CR material is to:
A) Give the product worth (e.g. more than one decent track on a disc).
B) Make the product less expensive than copying it would be. I suspect that the TOTAL cost of producing ONE CD is considerably less than $15.
(Someone figure me this; take the cost of manufacturing, production, marketing, bribing disc jockeys, paying for hookers, beer and drugs for the band, advances and the like, take out the tour till, merchandising, and other income. Take that number and divide it by the number of CDs sold at Best Buy and Wall-Mart. Really, someone in the know, do the math... Is it really $15 dollars each for millions of copies sold?)
C) Stop being so goddamn greedy. Both of you, the industry turds AND the cheapass tightwads.
See, there could be levels of music; expensive music, like Britany and Eminem, that wealthy people could afford to buy, and then, like, middleclass music, that most of us could afford; beer drinking music, like Meatloaf and Lynyrd Skynard, and finally, inexpensive, generic music targeted at welfare families and the like. Creed, U2 and 4-Non Blondes. You could even hand out MusicStamps (tm, BTW) that would allow less affluent people to purchase state subsidized music, like Community College Barbershop Quartets or The Dixie Chicks.:-P
This, in a nutshell, is why corporate IT people go berserk when Linux is mentioned as a replacement for their tried-and-true, I-bought-it-for-real-money operating systems.
You cannot seriously suggest that you build a NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE based on power generators, HACKED PRINGLES CANS and Linux.
Don't get me wrong; I think Linux is the perfect solution, but if people keep suggesting that the ideal way to implement a Linux solution ANYWHERE, is the same way they did it at home, we will remain the subject of scorn and derision.
Face it, they have to spend money, and spend a LOT of it.
Now, think of it this way.
Allow the power infrastructure to become normalized. In the places that do not have power, build POP-in-a-boxes. (Hey wait, it's sunny there in the Sunni Triangle, right? Perfect place for Solar Cells) Install quality routers and airheads (Linux makes for a great uber-geek techno-elite router; L****** and C**** make great, cheapass router/APs; you decide). Put them in a nice, weatherproof, locking and alarmed boxes. Do accurate radio surveys; place commercial hi-gain antennas in strategic locations. Build a couple of world class data centers for hubs and upstream links.
There's where you put your Linux boxen. Acres and acres of Apache, SENDMAIL, FTP. Stack upon stack of 1U Redhat servers. Every Iraqi gets 5MB of storage and 10 email addresses.
It's F-ing IOL, without the dumbass discs.
But it's real, redundant, survivable, and most of all MANAGEABLE.
Remeber, you can have it fast, you can have it cheap, and you can have it accurate, but you only get to pick TWO of those.
The RNC and the DNC are non-governmental bodies (the places where strategic and policy decisions are made in regards to positioning a particular party will take). Some of the members of these bodies are elected officials within The Senate and Congress, but are not on the "federal payroll".
To wit; Senate or Congressional servers should be home to official Senate or Congressional business (meeting scheduling, notes, Bills, laws; the detritus of day-to-day business), whereas party policy papers should be kept on party servers (www.dnc.org or www.rnc.org)
I'm not naive enough to believe that this doesn't happen in real life, I just want to point out how it's s'posed to be.
That Democratic Party (a non-governmental body) strategy position papers stored on a Senate (decidedly governmental body) server constitutes, quite possibly, misuse of government property.
That's splitting hairs, I'm sure, BUT...
After reading though the DOJ Code post below, it won't fit the general criteria called for in the code if it IS non-governmental data.
After reading through the article, it seems as if the data that the Repubs were reading was posted on an (un)secured server that both groups had access to.
While this should be considered unethical, it doesn't smack of being particularly criminal.
Dems shouldn't have posted sensitive (I note that none of this data has been described as CONFIDENTIAL, CLASSIFIED or SECRET) information on an unsecured, shared server.
Republicans should have had the ethical fortitude to keep their noses out of the files.
Better yet, they should have told someone and then kept their noses out (50% effort doesn't count).
Dems should have known that placing juicy conversations right under the noses of nosy Republicans was going to be a great temptation.
'Opportunity makes the thief' - Sir Francis Bacon
Republicans should have known that the sneaky, petty Dems would try to set them up with a honey-pot so that they could make a big stink about another "Watergate".
I dunno, I guess that personally, if you are dumb enough to leave your war plan out in plain sight, you deserve to be stopped by the Maginot Line.
Perhaps we can get enough people together and run something like the setiathome screensaver application, with the explicit purpose of fetching the video streams over and over again. That way, we can chew up their bandwidth and tax their server's CPUs so that they have to upgrade, or cheese off more customers.
Sure, it's not polite to grab a handful of mints from the big jar at the restaurant, but they were "free"...
Which nations are you refering to? Nazi Germany? Soviet Russia? Communist China (the good old fashioned Mao Zhe Dong China), Fascist Italy, Cuba, Starving, rail-thin North Korea, Thugish Iraq?
Yeah, democracy wrecked those countries.
Sure, capitalism and democracy have their issues, but they are driven, for the most part, by the WILL of the people they serve.
Complaints about how the system doesn't represent the will of the people are rubbish. There is only a ruling cabal that suppresses freedom and (not "of") choice if you allow it. Being a vocal minority is like farting during a tornado; pleasant, to be sure, but totally inefective. You have to go out and gather a resounding majority of people behind you (or with you; whatever) and send a message that can't be ignored.
When a presidential election is so close as to generate as much argument and invective thrown from both sides of the issue, it appears to me that neither side was that enthusiastic about it to begin with. If they were, it would have been a landslide, not an exercise in card counting and name calling.
If you don't like it, get your ass out there and vote for change, and/or spend your dollars (the true currency of individual power, no pun intended) on products that you believe are beneficial to you and others.
Failing that, you can always fall back on thinking globally and acting like a moron. You'd just be talking smack, and everyone will know it.
Remember though, if you make a ruckus, it's going to make it that much easier for US (the right-wing jackbooted thugs) to round you up and throw you in the labor camps. Too bad you gave all your gun rights away. hee hee!
So, the argument goes, the US, as an early adopter of technology, takes it in the pooper, while other countries get to reap the reward.
Whose citizens then have the temerity to malign the US for being technically backward?
To paraphrase: "My ancestors were bitching about cell phone quality when yours were still shoving (insert pre-Euro coinage here) into state owned rotary pay phones."
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that this is exactly what this experiment is designed to accomplish.
If you can eliminiate the need for a fission primary, it becomes feasible to test core compression theories, enabling designers to produce more efficient fusion devices; smaller, higher yield, and perhaps consuming less material.
The heats and pressures required to light the fusion fire are created quite frequently in accelerators, but I don't see them as being practical on a "working man's" scale.
It'd be fun to have one, that's for sure. Though I bet that their power bill leaves a little bit to be desired.
You would think that this guy would have learned something from this, since he was arrested yesterday for the very same thing.
Perhaps the soul knows that it's going to be able to come back and then just camps out for tickets.
- J
I love it when people crib from sources and don't attribute them.
Plagarize this, beyotch
http://www.sumeria.net/politics/usa.html
Originally from "Rogue Nation" by William Blum.
I also love how there's a biting qualifier to each entry:
"Killed Defenseless Indians"
"Killed War Veterans"
"Returned Dictator to power"
No bias there, eh?
I submit that the US is in good company here... take a look at the UN web http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/index.asp site, and do a little research. Figure out which contries have seen UN "occupation" and "regime change" and ask yourself if the people in those countries are any better off because of it.
You'd be interested to see that the UN's involvement in peace keeping efforts have regularly grown in magnitude (in sizes of forces deployed); yet have infrequently solved the crises that they are supposedly there to address.
They frequently leave these places in worse ways then they found them, yet no one shouts that they "Hate Kofi" and that he's an idiot.
You big bean-eatin double-standard-havin' goal-post-moving whiners.
With the resounding success of the attempt to ban the exportation of encryption technology; why do the powers that be think that the banning of the importation of decryption will be any more successfull?
The beauty here is that there are more smart people like this feller outside, than there are smart people inside companies (like Sony, and others) that believe that they can hide bits that are destined to huge audiences.
I personally think that they are trying to drive the consumer back into the theater, where they can make fat cash off of stale popcorn and swimming pool sized soda sales.
taken from the orbiting observation platform and am unimpressed. All I can see is the outline of a vaguely humanoid face.
- Jim
Our first toddler steps toward the Butlerian Jihad.
10,000 years from now, when the remaining humans destroy the last thinking machine overmind, it will topple, revealing a "Made in Japan" sticker. Way to go Sony!
What would happen to all the help desk people that would be out of jobs?
"I can't login, it says 'incorrect password'"
"Is the CAPSLOCK engaged?"
"Ummm... I don't *think* so CLICK type.type.type... Oh, it let me in"
"You're welcome"
There's one thing that you have to say about Republican administration. They very rarely have to come up with a "front" initiative to mask defense spending.
"We need more guns"
"OK, go buy some... Next..."
TechnoElitism
The firm belief, that because and individual has the cognitive capacity to figure out a solution, that that solution is superior to all others.
Has it really taken this long to identify this problem among the Open Source Community?
OSS is most often developed as a response to a need or a desire by a technically adept individual or group of individuals.
I think of it as the "There's-more-than-one-way-to-skin-a-yak-but-this
I have a problem, and I can solve this problem. I don't want to solve it over and over again, and I don't want to pay someone else to do it. I think solving this problem would be cool. Sometimes, and I do mean sometimes , I have an idea to solve a problem that no one else has even thought of yet.
I write some code. The code is good; it does what I want it to do. I don't need to document the arcane way it does what I want it to do, because I wrote it. I know what all the variables do. I know the string manipulation algorithms. I understand the connection sequences, and where all the configuration files go.
All is good in my world.
I have proven, once again, that carbon is smarter than silicon, and my carbon is smarter than most other people's carbon.
This may make it cryptic and cumbersome to others. So be it. To some extent, deep down inside, I am proud of this.
It's equal or better than any work Microsoft, or Symantec, or Cisco, or.. or.. or.. whoever could have done.
It's better because "I" made it, and "I" understand it.
Fast Forward
"Hey, look at my code, isn't it cool? It runs faster and smarter than other code like it, and it never crashes. Well, yeah, it's kind of a bitch to install, but it will solve that pesky problem you have with X. And it's FREE! Yeah, check it out, lets install it on your machine. You got a couple hours?"
"Well, yeah, you could just install Windows... Yeah, that is easier to do, but that costs MONEY! And it doesn't do all the cool things that mine does! Yeah, well, they do have support, but don't you understand that this is FREE! Didn't I tell you it's better too? I included a FAQ and a Readme file, what else do you want? Oh. Simplicity, well, that's fine and dandy, but wouldn't you feel better, knowing that you're running better software than the rest of the cattle? No, you wouldn't eh?"
"Feh! Who needs you... Go suck up to some corporate greed-mongering capitalist innovation wrecker. It's people like you that keep people like me from writing the GOOD software."
Can you taste the irony?
It seems to me quite obvious.
We need an OSS InstallShield. Not a package manager, not "tar -xvzf", and certainly not "make menuconfig\make dep\make clean\make zlilo\make install\reboot".
We need a tool that your AFR (Average F*ing Retard) can run and install software. Sure, that takes the elitism out of being able to run our OSS, but we will kick the piss out of the "pay me for crap" crowd.
At least I know, as an elitist, that people are stupid, and they're just never gonna get it.
Jim
Based on the number of quarters that I recall shoveling into Asteroids, Berserker, Joust, Defender, and Space Invaders games in the 80s, there's no way they could have run out yet.
Plus, since I missed so much school, they probably have my engineering degree in a closet someplace.
- Jim
Why do you infer that it is only possible that the REPUBLICANS would rig an election?
Are you implying that they are less ethical and more intelligent, and that they are the only party with the technical capacity and motivation to do so? Where do you come up with these facts that on which you base these gross inferences?
Last time I checked, these were the facts that I know:
1. Color me cynical, but all people are garbage.
2. All politicians are people.
3. Ergo, all politicians are garbage.
Or are you implying that Republicans would be the only party that would need to rig an election?
The last time I listened to the pundits, the common thought was that the reason that Kerry is gaining so much support in the caucuses was because he is perceived to be the only candidate that can truly compete with GWB.
If GWB is such a lackluster, painful, and heinous President and is so universally reviled, even that block of wood, Al Gore, should be able to beat him. Oh, wait.
All this implies a certain sense of inferiority for ALL of the Democrat candidates, and if that's the perception, wouldn't it be safe to admit that they would have just as much motivation to "cheat"?
- Jim
The reason that this argument falls apart is as follows:
:-P
If the "powers that be" can ticket you everytime you speed, people will stop speeding.
If they find a way to guarantee that a file that is shared across a network violates copyright, and prosecute (read: fine) the persons involved in the transmission of the file, people will stop trading copyrighted material.
I, for one believe, however, that a small percentage of users will always remain smarter than the folks trying to prevent promiscious copyright violations. They will create tools (like this) and will distribute/sell them to the rest of the not so smart folks.
The way to stop illegal copying of CR material is to:
A) Give the product worth (e.g. more than one decent track on a disc).
B) Make the product less expensive than copying it would be. I suspect that the TOTAL cost of producing ONE CD is considerably less than $15.
(Someone figure me this; take the cost of manufacturing, production, marketing, bribing disc jockeys, paying for hookers, beer and drugs for the band, advances and the like, take out the tour till, merchandising, and other income. Take that number and divide it by the number of CDs sold at Best Buy and Wall-Mart. Really, someone in the know, do the math... Is it really $15 dollars each for millions of copies sold?)
C) Stop being so goddamn greedy. Both of you, the industry turds AND the cheapass tightwads.
See, there could be levels of music; expensive music, like Britany and Eminem, that wealthy people could afford to buy, and then, like, middleclass music, that most of us could afford; beer drinking music, like Meatloaf and Lynyrd Skynard, and finally, inexpensive, generic music targeted at welfare families and the like. Creed, U2 and 4-Non Blondes. You could even hand out MusicStamps (tm, BTW) that would allow less affluent people to purchase state subsidized music, like Community College Barbershop Quartets or The Dixie Chicks.
Anyway... I tire of this conversation...
- Jim
This, in a nutshell, is why corporate IT people go berserk when Linux is mentioned as a replacement for their tried-and-true, I-bought-it-for-real-money operating systems.
You cannot seriously suggest that you build a NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE based on power generators, HACKED PRINGLES CANS and Linux.
Don't get me wrong; I think Linux is the perfect solution, but if people keep suggesting that the ideal way to implement a Linux solution ANYWHERE, is the same way they did it at home, we will remain the subject of scorn and derision.
Face it, they have to spend money, and spend a LOT of it.
Now, think of it this way.
Allow the power infrastructure to become normalized. In the places that do not have power, build POP-in-a-boxes. (Hey wait, it's sunny there in the Sunni Triangle, right? Perfect place for Solar Cells) Install quality routers and airheads (Linux makes for a great uber-geek techno-elite router; L****** and C**** make great, cheapass router/APs; you decide). Put them in a nice, weatherproof, locking and alarmed boxes. Do accurate radio surveys; place commercial hi-gain antennas in strategic locations. Build a couple of world class data centers for hubs and upstream links.
There's where you put your Linux boxen. Acres and acres of Apache, SENDMAIL, FTP. Stack upon stack of 1U Redhat servers. Every Iraqi gets 5MB of storage and 10 email addresses.
It's F-ing IOL, without the dumbass discs.
But it's real, redundant, survivable, and most of all MANAGEABLE.
Remeber, you can have it fast, you can have it cheap, and you can have it accurate, but you only get to pick TWO of those.
- Jim
Isn't this technically a "Trojan Horse"?
- Jim
Actually, no, it doesn't.
The RNC and the DNC are non-governmental bodies (the places where strategic and policy decisions are made in regards to positioning a particular party will take). Some of the members of these bodies are elected officials within The Senate and Congress, but are not on the "federal payroll".
To wit; Senate or Congressional servers should be home to official Senate or Congressional business (meeting scheduling, notes, Bills, laws; the detritus of day-to-day business), whereas party policy papers should be kept on party servers (www.dnc.org or www.rnc.org)
I'm not naive enough to believe that this doesn't happen in real life, I just want to point out how it's s'posed to be.
- Jim
That Democratic Party (a non-governmental body) strategy position papers stored on a Senate (decidedly governmental body) server constitutes, quite possibly, misuse of government property.
That's splitting hairs, I'm sure, BUT...
After reading though the DOJ Code post below, it won't fit the general criteria called for in the code if it IS non-governmental data.
Therefore the action could be non-criminal.
After reading through the article, it seems as if the data that the Repubs were reading was posted on an (un)secured server that both groups had access to.
While this should be considered unethical, it doesn't smack of being particularly criminal.
Dems shouldn't have posted sensitive (I note that none of this data has been described as CONFIDENTIAL, CLASSIFIED or SECRET) information on an unsecured, shared server.
Republicans should have had the ethical fortitude to keep their noses out of the files.
Better yet, they should have told someone and then kept their noses out (50% effort doesn't count).
Dems should have known that placing juicy conversations right under the noses of nosy Republicans was going to be a great temptation.
'Opportunity makes the thief' - Sir Francis Bacon
Republicans should have known that the sneaky, petty Dems would try to set them up with a honey-pot so that they could make a big stink about another "Watergate".
I dunno, I guess that personally, if you are dumb enough to leave your war plan out in plain sight, you deserve to be stopped by the Maginot Line.
Oh wait.
Perhaps we can get enough people together and run something like the setiathome screensaver application, with the explicit purpose of fetching the video streams over and over again. That way, we can chew up their bandwidth and tax their server's CPUs so that they have to upgrade, or cheese off more customers.
Sure, it's not polite to grab a handful of mints from the big jar at the restaurant, but they were "free"...
And you don't think that the US would have a problem leaving the rest of the world behind?
The meek would truly inherit the earth.
May I be the first to send you on your way with a hearty "See YA! Don't let the moon hit you on the ass on the way out."
Capitalism and Democracy defeat great nations??
Which nations are you refering to? Nazi Germany? Soviet Russia? Communist China (the good old fashioned Mao Zhe Dong China), Fascist Italy, Cuba, Starving, rail-thin North Korea, Thugish Iraq?
Yeah, democracy wrecked those countries.
Sure, capitalism and democracy have their issues, but they are driven, for the most part, by the WILL of the people they serve.
Complaints about how the system doesn't represent the will of the people are rubbish. There is only a ruling cabal that suppresses freedom and (not "of") choice if you allow it. Being a vocal minority is like farting during a tornado; pleasant, to be sure, but totally inefective. You have to go out and gather a resounding majority of people behind you (or with you; whatever) and send a message that can't be ignored.
When a presidential election is so close as to generate as much argument and invective thrown from both sides of the issue, it appears to me that neither side was that enthusiastic about it to begin with. If they were, it would have been a landslide, not an exercise in card counting and name calling.
If you don't like it, get your ass out there and vote for change, and/or spend your dollars (the true currency of individual power, no pun intended) on products that you believe are beneficial to you and others.
Failing that, you can always fall back on thinking globally and acting like a moron. You'd just be talking smack, and everyone will know it.
Remember though, if you make a ruckus, it's going to make it that much easier for US (the right-wing jackbooted thugs) to round you up and throw you in the labor camps. Too bad you gave all your gun rights away. hee hee!
.
So, the argument goes, the US, as an early adopter of technology, takes it in the pooper, while other countries get to reap the reward.
Whose citizens then have the temerity to malign the US for being technically backward?
To paraphrase: "My ancestors were bitching about cell phone quality when yours were still shoving (insert pre-Euro coinage here) into state owned rotary pay phones."
- J
Ummm, Concorde?
You're probably better off without the old bag anyway...