The extortion they are referring to could be "fix this or I will post it publicly." Not all extortion involves money. I don't believe they would be correct, but that may be how they are interpreting things.
Most people I know already consider $.99 a ripoff. If they are getting $.34 per 3-5MB file that people purchase that they maintain, they must have some serious infrastructure and payroll costs associated with the service. If the service grew 10 fold, their fixed costs would allow for a greater profit yield.
Now if they lowered the cost per song to $.49, then I might consider buying music. $.99 for music with no physical media and no liner and cover art, no printed lyrics, inferior quality to CDs, and with greater anti consumer limitations is no deal.
I wish the record labels would lower prices and go for higher volume in the new digital world, but then, their current model of price fixing and artificial scarcity would not work so well.
Sure, they are in a different format. Sure, they might be cleaner and with better sound. But many of us have already purchased these only to have to purchase them again at full retail. And then we will have to purchase them again when they are released on HD-DVD. And then we will need to purchase them again when the collectors edition HD-DVD set comes out. And don't forget about the HD-DVD directors edition Episodes 1-6 boxed set.
While I am a Star Wars fan, I find it hard to get excited about this when so much money is being made selling the same material over and over.
I didn't notice that. If the original had Han shooting first, and then they only changed it for the 2nd release to make him more PC, then yes, it does make a difference.
You are already paying for a tuner in your TV that must follow the NTSC standard, whether you like it or not.
The requirement that TV sets carry an OTA tuner actually protects the free OTA content for all of us, even if we don't use it. Not everybody wants to pay a monthly fee to get what we can already get for free. And in some cases, like satellite, you don't always even get the locals or the national feed due to broadcast territories.
Try going to 640x480 on your computer moniter for a while.
HDTV will get you up to 1920x1080. Considering the current resolution of TV, that is a pretty huge improvement.
The other advantage is with digital, we get more out of the exact same bandwidth, and the current analog bandwidth can be returned hopefully to better our society as we grow. Same bandwidth = HDTV resolution with 5 channel audio or 4 regular channels (still higher than todays standard) also with superior sound.
They are much cheaper now. A STB that does much more than just handle OTA signals goes for about $400.
An integrated tuner will be less than $200. And as production ramps up as mandated, prices will come down to less than $50 a set.
Eventually, it will be just like the cost of the present tuners in our TVs which at one point, had to be able to handle color TV as a new standard, and be cable ready for 100+ channels as opposed to the original 13.
Actually, at some point, the analog signals will be shut off.
Then none of the older TV sets will be able to tune in OTA signals. But by then (2007?), set top box receivers should be much cheaper, and then there will still be satellite and cable.
It really isn't a matter of phasing out all of the old TVs. It is about phasing in all of the broadcasters. When everything is only available in digital and all new TVs carry the new standard, then digital will be mainstream. And it will not take 20 years.
An SUV is highly versatile. You (and I) only capture a short list of the reasons why people buy SUVs. I understand that many people buy them simply because they want them, which is a legitimate reason.
But for considering your neighbors, I'm sure some of them enjoy not running out of room when grocery shopping, going camping, carrying XMAS gifts to relatives, or picking up that big screen TV. Do you really watch everywhere they go to verify they never transport more than 4 people?
Are you sure they don't have a boat stored at a storage lot (like I used to do)?
If you live in a city, how do you know they don't have horses? I don't keep my horse trailer at home. It is at the stables, where the horses are.
I just get a bit perturbed when someone makes an argument that undermines the choices people make because they think they don't need it. You argue a minivan is more practical. Minivans are also much more limited and get awful gas mileage compared to a sedan.
I know I can live with that...the same way I can live with someone driving a sports car that goes 0-60 in 4.2 seconds, the same way I can deal with a minivan that blocks the view much more than a pickup truck, the same way I can live with someone driving a motorcycle, a beetle, a mercedes, or a volvo. For the most part, it is none of my business what other people drive and for what reasons they drive them.
In the 80's, the yuppie cars rules. The 90's brought the minivan to new heights and the late 90's to 2000's brought the SUV. I care not what others drive and how fads change. Who really cares. Maybe micro machines like the beetle, mini cooper, or something else will be the next fad. I still won't care then.
Re:Translated for the America-Impaired
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A suicide bomber is someone that blows themself up.
A homicide bomber is someone that blows themself up with the intent of blowing others up.
If someone shoots a bunch of people and then shoots themself, do you call it a mass suicide or murder?
To me, it's obvious. I don't know why the rest of the news media doesn't recognize the obvious.
When I commute to work, it takes me about 25 minutes. If I rode my bike to work, I would take up less space, however, I would take 3-4 times as long to get there. If everybody dropped driving and rode their bikes, you would have far more people on the roadways at any given time.
When you account for all the bicycles sharing the roads with cars, for those that do not have an option of biking, you get serious traffic jams.
So switching over to riding your bike will not get rid of traffic jams. Traffic jams are largely a result of distance between work and home, and the greater efficiency of brakes to accelerators.
Ridiculous...you must not know too many people that have SUVs.
You said, "If you don't NEED (or want) to go stomping through 3 feet of water, up 25 degree rocky inclines, and through 2 feet of snow on a regular basis, you don't NEED an SUV." You then go on to suggest someone rent a truck/suv when they need to pull their boat.
These arguments to me appear to be Eco-Elitist. I am just one example of someone who has an SUV for practical reasons, although I don't really need any to justify my purchase. People buy SUVs because they can pretty much do it all.
Need to haul the family around? Most SUVs will hold 5 comfortable, and 8 with the back row seating.
Need to tow a boat? No problem. The big V8 will easily haul 2 tons up a hill. Horse trailer? Same thing
Need to go grocery shopping? There's no shortage of space.
What about moving furniture? While moving vans are great, an SUV can easily move tables, couches, chairs, TVs, and bedroom furniture. And you can strap a mattress to the roof if needed.
4WD and offroading? No problem. Sure, there are cars with 4WD, but they just don't have the vertical clearance to go many places SUVs can.
And you get all this in a single vehicle...not a pickup truck + minivan + 4WD car.
SUVs are versatile, and that is why many people buy them.
FYI - I drive a Chevy Tahoe (commute to work in a Mazda 626) and I do all of the above except haul kids around.
14 billion is too many people for this planet. I personally would like to see the U.S. population stabilize or cap at no more than 300 million. And the U.S. has a huge area to spread all these people out.
I don't care to go vegetarian so people can have more offspring. The only real incentive for me would be to feed the current population when we are able to live much longer lives.
Whenever we use a natural resource that we take from the planet, chances are it would cost more to replenish (manufacture) that resource than to mine it. Otherwise, we would wouldn't mine it in the first place.
It is hard to determine what the cost is to the commons (public resources), however, I think that the example given is a poor one.
Fuel/energy/transportation costs are all included in the end cost of products. Where I live, we pay $.36 a gallon plus sales tax. And we also pay a fee that goes towards roads (registration). Commercial vehicles also pay additional fees based on the weight they are allowed to carry. They pay extra fees when they purchase or re-tread tires. This is one case where some of the external costs are included in the price.
When it comes to fuel, regardless of the use, there are external costs that our society bears. And it is not just commercial transportation. We use plenty of fuel on our own for heating, commuting, travelling, and recreation.
The best thing you can do if you want to save the planet is don't have any kids. If I am excessive in my usage, drive an SUV, constantly heat my home, and use buy goods for far away, I will not come close to causing the same damage to the planet as those of you with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 kids. If people had to bear the external costs of their own production (offspring), there would be far fewer problems with overpopulation.
FYI - I only plan on having 1 child, in maybe 5 years. Unless you have 1 or fewer offspring, shut up about my SUV.
The only reason cable is still analog is because of the legacy systems out there which all work with analog. The cable company has an edge over satellite, being able to provide service to an unlimited # of TVs in home without a box.
If they turned off the analog, they would have additional bandwidth to play around with, but might loose customers. Or they would have to supply the customer with digital boxes at a more reasonable price.
And then there is the universal mandated route...if the FCC can set a standard that all basic tier cable TV channels are unscrambled and all OTA likewise follows the current standard, all new TVs will be able to tune without a separate box (except for premiums which you need a box for anyways).
The box will just be a transitional item, just like older TVs that did not include above channel 13. By 2010, most older TVs will be phased out or have a cheap converter box.
I normally advocate for backwards compatability, but in this case, I think we need to drop the old standard and adopt the new. Bandwidth is a limited resource. Going digital will allow us to either increase quality, volume, or a combo of the two.
Large screen TVs are already mandated to carry digital tuners prior to 2006. They will help phase things in.
People oppose the $2 increase in the cable bill because they see no added value.
I'm actuall going to switch from dish to cable this weekend. It will be cheaper for me to get 2 digital receivers with HBO and Cinemax than I get on dish. And I pick up 2 more local stations.
I also expect that cable will go HDTV soon in my area and I will be able to get a HDTV receiver cheaper than through DISH ($699 for the whole package is outrageous).
You don't need a new digital TV. You need a digital converter box. The box will handle your viewing rights, descramble the content, and will control the outputs (analog, coax cable, component videos).
Cable and satellite are already digital, even though your analog TV still works.
Digital boxes will be under $50 each. They will be easy to sell to consumers who want to go "digital quality" or who will be able to pick up additional channels (since broadcasters can carry more content on their allocated bandwidth.
Actually, while the cable and OTA broadcasters may be technologically capable of broadcasting with the broadcast flag off or set to infinity, they will likely be strongarmed into using it by the content industry, which would like to charge you to use timeshifting, charge you for the DVD box set, charge you for the extras and outtakes, etc.
The TV stations and cable companies will have little choice if they want to air any content not produced and owned in-house.
>>It doesn't irradiate the parts that could need to be serviced or any liquids. It contains the fuel needed for 30 years, which isn't that much in terms of a big plant (121 days supply for a normal-sized plant).
Big plants have 18 to 24 month fuel cycles. In each fuel cycle, about 1/3 of the core is replaced. So each fuel bundle lasts about 6 years. A typical reactor produces about 1000MW continuously for most of the cycle.
That is the real danger of dirty bombs. More people will die from the explosion (conventional bomb part) and trampling/crashing their cars into eachother, than will ever die of radiation.
The dirty bomb concept is ideal for terrorists, who wish to instill fear in the public. Still, I don't want to see dirty bombs or any other type going off since either way, people will die.
This is for the P800 from the Sony/Ericsson Website. The p900 should be similar.
Performance talk time
up to 13 hrs
Standby talk time
up to 400 hrs
400 hours is about 16 days. This seems reasonable. Ericsson phones are pretty efficient. My T39M will go about 15 days between charges with about 1.5 hours talk time, or about 8 hours of straight talk time with a little standby. The P900 page did not list details on talk/standby, but the article does point out the p900 and p800 use the same battery.
And look at the polls in the recent California elections. Yeah they favored Arnold, but they gave Bustamonte waaaay too much credit. He did not come even close to the predicted numbers, which at times had him in the lead. And I tend to believe that the election results were not fraudulent. They didn't need to be. And this was in a Democratic Party state. Sometimes, people just change their minds, don't vote, or lie.
Look at the source of the polls. Network television tends to be left of center (bias). Not all people polled actually vote.
Democrats also like to conveniently forget the letter of the law when it serves their purposes.
When the law is broken, our courts perform the balance. The law also required the election to be certified by a specified date, and that did not happen either.
I agree that the law may have stated that the ballots are invalid, however the constitution can trump laws that are conflicting, providing for equal protection, etc. Just because one law exists does not mean another conflicting law does not...hence our courts and interpretation.
I don't think it matters who is in office. 9/11 was going to happen, under Bush or Gore. Only luck would have saved us for another day. Osama was wanted prior to Bush taking office. Clinton didn't find him either but I do not blame Clinton. If someone else wins, there is no guarantee they will find any of the people on this list either:
a) Osama b) Mullah Omar c) Saddam d) WMD e) the anthrax mailers f) the leaker of the CIA agent
The real reason to go to war with IRAQ and why it was a good thing is Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the stability in the region. He continued to defy U.N. orders and sanctions. Saddam was tyrannical and was fuel on the fire of instability in that region. And Saddam was pretty terrible and vicious. So we didn't find and WMDs. Big deal. He still failed to account for the destruction of the ones he had, and he had missiles he was not supposed to possess.
I still think what we did was a good thing for our future security. I would rather have us go in and find nothing (when IRAQ was already being very deceptive) than wait in ignorance hoping there are no WMD until it is too late.
You seem to forget that the democratic party only wanted to recount in certain counties which they were more likely to gain votes rather than the whole state. You also seem to miss that the first recount that was done still favored Bush. Then they went into the interpretation game where they tried to discern the intent of the voter, even going so far as to try and count dimpled chads (ones where not even a single side of the 4 sides broke). You also seem to forget that the Democrats wanted the overseas military absentee votes thrown out because they were not postmarked individually (the mail bags were clearly marked). Military is statistically more likely to vote Republican.
The election was a tight race. Our system uses the electoral college which give a disproportionate vote in favor of small states (3 minimum - same as Congressional votes).
And no, states are not free to do whatever they wish when it comes to a Federal election. They must follow laws, both Federal and State.
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The extortion they are referring to could be "fix this or I will post it publicly." Not all extortion involves money. I don't believe they would be correct, but that may be how they are interpreting things.
Most people I know already consider $.99 a ripoff. If they are getting $.34 per 3-5MB file that people purchase that they maintain, they must have some serious infrastructure and payroll costs associated with the service. If the service grew 10 fold, their fixed costs would allow for a greater profit yield.
Now if they lowered the cost per song to $.49, then I might consider buying music. $.99 for music with no physical media and no liner and cover art, no printed lyrics, inferior quality to CDs, and with greater anti consumer limitations is no deal.
I wish the record labels would lower prices and go for higher volume in the new digital world, but then, their current model of price fixing and artificial scarcity would not work so well.
Sure, they are in a different format. Sure, they might be cleaner and with better sound. But many of us have already purchased these only to have to purchase them again at full retail. And then we will have to purchase them again when they are released on HD-DVD. And then we will need to purchase them again when the collectors edition HD-DVD set comes out. And don't forget about the HD-DVD directors edition Episodes 1-6 boxed set. While I am a Star Wars fan, I find it hard to get excited about this when so much money is being made selling the same material over and over.
I didn't notice that. If the original had Han shooting first, and then they only changed it for the 2nd release to make him more PC, then yes, it does make a difference.
You are already paying for a tuner in your TV that must follow the NTSC standard, whether you like it or not.
The requirement that TV sets carry an OTA tuner actually protects the free OTA content for all of us, even if we don't use it. Not everybody wants to pay a monthly fee to get what we can already get for free. And in some cases, like satellite, you don't always even get the locals or the national feed due to broadcast territories.
A lot of people care.
Try going to 640x480 on your computer moniter for a while.
HDTV will get you up to 1920x1080. Considering the current resolution of TV, that is a pretty huge improvement.
The other advantage is with digital, we get more out of the exact same bandwidth, and the current analog bandwidth can be returned hopefully to better our society as we grow. Same bandwidth = HDTV resolution with 5 channel audio or 4 regular channels (still higher than todays standard) also with superior sound.
Resolution is not the only issue here.
They are much cheaper now. A STB that does much more than just handle OTA signals goes for about $400.
An integrated tuner will be less than $200. And as production ramps up as mandated, prices will come down to less than $50 a set.
Eventually, it will be just like the cost of the present tuners in our TVs which at one point, had to be able to handle color TV as a new standard, and be cable ready for 100+ channels as opposed to the original 13.
Actually, at some point, the analog signals will be shut off.
Then none of the older TV sets will be able to tune in OTA signals. But by then (2007?), set top box receivers should be much cheaper, and then there will still be satellite and cable.
It really isn't a matter of phasing out all of the old TVs. It is about phasing in all of the broadcasters. When everything is only available in digital and all new TVs carry the new standard, then digital will be mainstream. And it will not take 20 years.
You still seem to miss my point...
An SUV is highly versatile. You (and I) only capture a short list of the reasons why people buy SUVs. I understand that many people buy them simply because they want them, which is a legitimate reason.
But for considering your neighbors, I'm sure some of them enjoy not running out of room when grocery shopping, going camping, carrying XMAS gifts to relatives, or picking up that big screen TV. Do you really watch everywhere they go to verify they never transport more than 4 people?
Are you sure they don't have a boat stored at a storage lot (like I used to do)?
If you live in a city, how do you know they don't have horses? I don't keep my horse trailer at home. It is at the stables, where the horses are.
I just get a bit perturbed when someone makes an argument that undermines the choices people make because they think they don't need it. You argue a minivan is more practical. Minivans are also much more limited and get awful gas mileage compared to a sedan.
I know I can live with that...the same way I can live with someone driving a sports car that goes 0-60 in 4.2 seconds, the same way I can deal with a minivan that blocks the view much more than a pickup truck, the same way I can live with someone driving a motorcycle, a beetle, a mercedes, or a volvo. For the most part, it is none of my business what other people drive and for what reasons they drive them.
In the 80's, the yuppie cars rules. The 90's brought the minivan to new heights and the late 90's to 2000's brought the SUV. I care not what others drive and how fads change. Who really cares. Maybe micro machines like the beetle, mini cooper, or something else will be the next fad. I still won't care then.
A suicide bomber is someone that blows themself up.
A homicide bomber is someone that blows themself up with the intent of blowing others up.
If someone shoots a bunch of people and then shoots themself, do you call it a mass suicide or murder?
To me, it's obvious. I don't know why the rest of the news media doesn't recognize the obvious.
When I commute to work, it takes me about 25 minutes. If I rode my bike to work, I would take up less space, however, I would take 3-4 times as long to get there. If everybody dropped driving and rode their bikes, you would have far more people on the roadways at any given time.
When you account for all the bicycles sharing the roads with cars, for those that do not have an option of biking, you get serious traffic jams.
So switching over to riding your bike will not get rid of traffic jams. Traffic jams are largely a result of distance between work and home, and the greater efficiency of brakes to accelerators.
Ridiculous...you must not know too many people that have SUVs.
You said, "If you don't NEED (or want) to go stomping through 3 feet of water, up 25 degree rocky inclines, and through 2 feet of snow on a regular basis, you don't NEED an SUV." You then go on to suggest someone rent a truck/suv when they need to pull their boat.
These arguments to me appear to be Eco-Elitist. I am just one example of someone who has an SUV for practical reasons, although I don't really need any to justify my purchase. People buy SUVs because they can pretty much do it all.
Need to haul the family around? Most SUVs will hold 5 comfortable, and 8 with the back row seating.
Need to tow a boat? No problem. The big V8 will easily haul 2 tons up a hill. Horse trailer? Same thing
Need to go grocery shopping? There's no shortage of space.
What about moving furniture? While moving vans are great, an SUV can easily move tables, couches, chairs, TVs, and bedroom furniture. And you can strap a mattress to the roof if needed.
4WD and offroading? No problem. Sure, there are cars with 4WD, but they just don't have the vertical clearance to go many places SUVs can.
And you get all this in a single vehicle...not a pickup truck + minivan + 4WD car.
SUVs are versatile, and that is why many people buy them.
FYI - I drive a Chevy Tahoe (commute to work in a Mazda 626) and I do all of the above except haul kids around.
14 billion is too many people for this planet. I personally would like to see the U.S. population stabilize or cap at no more than 300 million. And the U.S. has a huge area to spread all these people out.
I don't care to go vegetarian so people can have more offspring. The only real incentive for me would be to feed the current population when we are able to live much longer lives.
What is the replacement cost of anything on this planet?
Gold? Topsoil? Fish? Trees? Clean atmosphere? Minerals? Silicon? Plastic?
Whenever we use a natural resource that we take from the planet, chances are it would cost more to replenish (manufacture) that resource than to mine it. Otherwise, we would wouldn't mine it in the first place.
It is hard to determine what the cost is to the commons (public resources), however, I think that the example given is a poor one.
Fuel/energy/transportation costs are all included in the end cost of products. Where I live, we pay $.36 a gallon plus sales tax. And we also pay a fee that goes towards roads (registration). Commercial vehicles also pay additional fees based on the weight they are allowed to carry. They pay extra fees when they purchase or re-tread tires. This is one case where some of the external costs are included in the price.
When it comes to fuel, regardless of the use, there are external costs that our society bears. And it is not just commercial transportation. We use plenty of fuel on our own for heating, commuting, travelling, and recreation.
The best thing you can do if you want to save the planet is don't have any kids. If I am excessive in my usage, drive an SUV, constantly heat my home, and use buy goods for far away, I will not come close to causing the same damage to the planet as those of you with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 kids. If people had to bear the external costs of their own production (offspring), there would be far fewer problems with overpopulation.
FYI - I only plan on having 1 child, in maybe 5 years. Unless you have 1 or fewer offspring, shut up about my SUV.
The only reason cable is still analog is because of the legacy systems out there which all work with analog. The cable company has an edge over satellite, being able to provide service to an unlimited # of TVs in home without a box.
If they turned off the analog, they would have additional bandwidth to play around with, but might loose customers. Or they would have to supply the customer with digital boxes at a more reasonable price.
And then there is the universal mandated route...if the FCC can set a standard that all basic tier cable TV channels are unscrambled and all OTA likewise follows the current standard, all new TVs will be able to tune without a separate box (except for premiums which you need a box for anyways).
The box will just be a transitional item, just like older TVs that did not include above channel 13. By 2010, most older TVs will be phased out or have a cheap converter box.
I normally advocate for backwards compatability, but in this case, I think we need to drop the old standard and adopt the new. Bandwidth is a limited resource. Going digital will allow us to either increase quality, volume, or a combo of the two.
Large screen TVs are already mandated to carry digital tuners prior to 2006. They will help phase things in.
People oppose the $2 increase in the cable bill because they see no added value.
I'm actuall going to switch from dish to cable this weekend. It will be cheaper for me to get 2 digital receivers with HBO and Cinemax than I get on dish. And I pick up 2 more local stations.
I also expect that cable will go HDTV soon in my area and I will be able to get a HDTV receiver cheaper than through DISH ($699 for the whole package is outrageous).
You don't need a new digital TV. You need a digital converter box. The box will handle your viewing rights, descramble the content, and will control the outputs (analog, coax cable, component videos).
Cable and satellite are already digital, even though your analog TV still works.
Digital boxes will be under $50 each. They will be easy to sell to consumers who want to go "digital quality" or who will be able to pick up additional channels (since broadcasters can carry more content on their allocated bandwidth.
Actually, while the cable and OTA broadcasters may be technologically capable of broadcasting with the broadcast flag off or set to infinity, they will likely be strongarmed into using it by the content industry, which would like to charge you to use timeshifting, charge you for the DVD box set, charge you for the extras and outtakes, etc.
The TV stations and cable companies will have little choice if they want to air any content not produced and owned in-house.
>>It doesn't irradiate the parts that could need to be serviced or any liquids. It contains the fuel needed for 30 years, which isn't that much in terms of a big plant (121 days supply for a normal-sized plant).
Big plants have 18 to 24 month fuel cycles. In each fuel cycle, about 1/3 of the core is replaced. So each fuel bundle lasts about 6 years. A typical reactor produces about 1000MW continuously for most of the cycle.
Typical fuel is less than 5% enriched U235.
That is the real danger of dirty bombs. More people will die from the explosion (conventional bomb part) and trampling/crashing their cars into eachother, than will ever die of radiation.
The dirty bomb concept is ideal for terrorists, who wish to instill fear in the public. Still, I don't want to see dirty bombs or any other type going off since either way, people will die.
This is for the P800 from the Sony/Ericsson Website. The p900 should be similar.
Performance talk time
up to 13 hrs
Standby talk time
up to 400 hrs
400 hours is about 16 days. This seems reasonable. Ericsson phones are pretty efficient. My T39M will go about 15 days between charges with about 1.5 hours talk time, or about 8 hours of straight talk time with a little standby. The P900 page did not list details on talk/standby, but the article does point out the p900 and p800 use the same battery.
And look at the polls in the recent California elections. Yeah they favored Arnold, but they gave Bustamonte waaaay too much credit. He did not come even close to the predicted numbers, which at times had him in the lead. And I tend to believe that the election results were not fraudulent. They didn't need to be. And this was in a Democratic Party state. Sometimes, people just change their minds, don't vote, or lie.
Look at the source of the polls. Network television tends to be left of center (bias). Not all people polled actually vote.
Democrats also like to conveniently forget the letter of the law when it serves their purposes.
When the law is broken, our courts perform the balance. The law also required the election to be certified by a specified date, and that did not happen either.
I agree that the law may have stated that the ballots are invalid, however the constitution can trump laws that are conflicting, providing for equal protection, etc. Just because one law exists does not mean another conflicting law does not...hence our courts and interpretation.
I don't think it matters who is in office. 9/11 was going to happen, under Bush or Gore. Only luck would have saved us for another day. Osama was wanted prior to Bush taking office. Clinton didn't find him either but I do not blame Clinton. If someone else wins, there is no guarantee they will find any of the people on this list either:
a) Osama
b) Mullah Omar
c) Saddam
d) WMD
e) the anthrax mailers
f) the leaker of the CIA agent
The real reason to go to war with IRAQ and why it was a good thing is Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the stability in the region. He continued to defy U.N. orders and sanctions. Saddam was tyrannical and was fuel on the fire of instability in that region. And Saddam was pretty terrible and vicious. So we didn't find and WMDs. Big deal. He still failed to account for the destruction of the ones he had, and he had missiles he was not supposed to possess.
I still think what we did was a good thing for our future security. I would rather have us go in and find nothing (when IRAQ was already being very deceptive) than wait in ignorance hoping there are no WMD until it is too late.
You seem to forget that the democratic party only wanted to recount in certain counties which they were more likely to gain votes rather than the whole state. You also seem to miss that the first recount that was done still favored Bush. Then they went into the interpretation game where they tried to discern the intent of the voter, even going so far as to try and count dimpled chads (ones where not even a single side of the 4 sides broke). You also seem to forget that the Democrats wanted the overseas military absentee votes thrown out because they were not postmarked individually (the mail bags were clearly marked). Military is statistically more likely to vote Republican.
The election was a tight race. Our system uses the electoral college which give a disproportionate vote in favor of small states (3 minimum - same as Congressional votes).
And no, states are not free to do whatever they wish when it comes to a Federal election. They must follow laws, both Federal and State.