Gosh, what political agenda is that? The summary only says that Air Marshals are meeting an arbitrary quota by putting innocent people on the secret watch list. You think this is a right-left issue? Are you fucking nuts?
Why shouldn't a company get teased or worse when their much-over-hyped product's release date slips again and again and again -and- drops all of their promised innovative and ground-breaking features?
Just like Duke Nuke'm?
If Vista had come out when promised, it would have been ground-breaking and innovative. If it had come out only two years late, it would have caught up. But now Windows is so far behind other modern operating systems that Vista will still be underpowered. If it weren't for vendor lock-in, they would have few new customers. So why shouldn't we laugh at them? The overbearing monopoly with more cash-resources than God, is slipping.
Most people have horrible posture when typing, resting their arms on corners, extending their hands far out to the right (past the vestigal number pad) to mouse, keeping their head at an awkward angle that distorts their spine's natural curves..
First off, she should listen to her body. If something hurts, stop doing it. This is the fair warning that her body is giving her. She can take breaks-- walk once around the building, refill her water glass, stretch in place, shake her hands. Use a timer in Outlook that goes off every twenty minutes at first until the symptoms show continued improvement.
Second, she should avoid Repetive Motions as much as possible. Break the habit. Mix things up frequently. * Switch mousing hands regularly. * Always rest hands in the lap. * Adjust or fix the lighting. (reduces muscle tension and eye strain) * Adjust the monitor height. * Switch out the effing keyboard for something without an attached number pad. * Get a keyboard that is the right size for her body frame. * Attach multiple mice to her system for instant switching. * Get an adjustable keyboard tray. * Learn and use keyboard shortcuts. * Change positions several times a day. * Get an adjustable monitor stand. (and replace the monster CRT with an LCD) * Automate her crap work.
Touchpad mice let her use her thumb, pinky, palm, even her knuckles if her hand is being too sensitive. It's easy enough to attach both a touchpad and a normal (but ergonomic) mouse to the system so that she can switch between them according to the action/gesture and what her hand is feeling that moment.
I'm pissed that I missed the boat on the Touchstream keyboard/mice/touchpads, but the TypeMatrix keyboards are a great second-place winner. The keyboards come in a small and large size, with the small one suitable for most people. They also fit correct posture more naturally, by getting rid of the oh-so-stupid staggered key layout, and by separating the left and right sizes a little, and adding extra enter/backspace keys in the center for good measure.
I got one for someone at our work with chronic pain, and she had no problem adjusting to the new layout in hours. Her condition has improved a lot, and she credits the keyboard and better lighting. (I tried to get her to use a touchpad mouse, but it completely ignored her touch.)
At my desk, I have the TypeMatrix keyboard, a regular mouse for precision-work, and a Cirque touchpad for normal mousing. (The touchpad is 9 years old, and still works great.) I put a large box on the side table so that I can also stand and use my personal laptop for the 40% of my work that is internet crap and web-development. When I'm web browsing (er, researching), I can actually kick back in my chair, and do everything just with the touchpad. Change positions!
(I have considered the Kenesis split keyboard but it was too big and pricey for me at the time. I call it a fine third choice.)
Here is the Word document containing the notes from our discussion last Tuesday, along with a couple images of the product mockups I mentioned. Let's discuss pricing at our next meeting.
Attached: AcmeRockets.doc (2.3MB)
----
Unbeknownst to our government guy, the customized rootkit sends out copies of emails and documents to AcmeRockets so that they can be assured of getting the lowest bid, or maybe even catch the goverment guy surfing Russian pr0n for old-fashioned blackmail.
Most of the responses seem to assume that you either need the power or the privacy. Or is there some other reason you need a separate system from your regular laptop?
Is the development you're doing for your work or for yourself?
Why is a laptop a bad option if it's powerful enough and small enough? (You said you hate the waste of space, but it's still smaller than a 1U system. And you weren't complaining that a MacMini was slow-- you said it was the wrong size.)
If you're doing a web app, why not run the server on the same system? (It's easy enough to set up Apache/MySQL/P*/J*)
You can get a MacBook with 2GB RAM, dual-core, fast, small. If you need extra disk space or a non-work environment, you can easily attach and/or boot to an external firewall drive. Or setup a second user to segregate your personal stuff.
The CPU isn't always the bottleneck. Sometimes it's the hard drive access time, sometimes the memory bus speed, often it's the video card. It's still got a 5400RPM hard drive, and the same user, so it's unlikely to perform "double or better in all circumstances". A rule of thumb is that the speed of the CPU only contributes about 40% of the perceived performance.
Now for the bad analogy.. If you bought a car that goes twice as fast as your previous car, would it take you half the time to commute to work?
If you need to drink something, God created water for a reason.
Yeah, for martinis shaken, not stirred.
He wants something to drink, not to wash in.
Diet Pepsi tastes fine after a while, and it's cheap and readily available. World-wide, without the parasites. Add a squeeze of FRESH lemon for that extra flavor. Fruit juice has as many calories as soda, and unless it's citris (vitamin C), you may as well have the soda. I like the taste of flavored mineral water, and get the caffiene from coffee and espresso with plenty of sugar and "cream", or Jolt gum.
By the way, I lost 30 pounds in two months after years of getting nowhere dieting. I logged everything I ate, and kept it to under 900 calories. (usually) It was great reinforcement seeing the weight drop off almost every day.. didn't have to eff around with points, special diets, or whatever. I didn't even exercise, though i walked more.
It's real easy to eat healthier when you have to trade off between 1 cup of strawberries or a 1/4 cup of plain white rice. Or a plate of mushrooms vs. an extra 1/2 cup of pasta. Veggie juice and coffee (and fruit and yogurt and nuts) instead of a (grande) mocha. A hamburger without cheese or mayo, OR a third of those fries on the side. Spices and non-calorie sauces help a lot. I ate well, and savored everything. But whatever, if YOU track those calories, YOU'LL make your own choices.
It worked only if I ate every few hours. Breakfast (150), lunch (250), snack (75), dinner (300), snack (75) + some here and there. And as long as I figured out the calories for everything I ate. (Though I didn't bother writing down leafy veggies)
I've kept it off 6 months now, and I'm on the last notch of my belts (down 3 notches), so there!;)
The health risk appears to be 1) if you don't have the weight to lose or 2) if you go much longer than a month then you might get ??? stones. (In the interests of Full disclosure.)
Maybe I'm doing this the hard way, but I have a perl script crawl our (40) systems to get file stats for firefox.exe (via \\system\c$). It compares the version (or size+date) of each system's firefox.exe to stats I get from an updated system.
I send out an email to everyone telling them how to do the update (with recycled instructions). After a reasonable amount of time, I rerun the script and start bugging the stragglers.
I sometimes get complaints, but I remind them that the alternatives are either 1) I go around and kick them off the systems to do the updates, or 2) I force them to log off at night (which they don't like because they lose all of their settings and command histories). They prefer to do the updates on their own terms.
I find this is easily modified to monitor Real, Quicktime, Adobe and such which have interactive updates.
There's a mandatory recycling fee for monitors in California. Screens between 15" and 35" have an $8 fee (CRT and LCD). This only started last year, so it's misleading to say that just because you were charged a state-imposed tax on a newly purchased system, that it wasn't "free" to recycle your POS Pentium-III system. Heck, everyone has to charge the tax, but you don't see Fry's begging to take back your old systems*.
I just went through this process a few months ago, and ended up with GFI Anti-spam/anti-virus for our underworked Exchange 2003 server (about a dozen users). I'm pretty happy with it. It's one of the few that uses a Baysian mail filter (trained by dropping emails into public folders). It also has auto-whitelisting (from outgoing emails), and a lot of other practical features, and just keeps working in the background. And reasonably priced. It's an extra bonus having a mail anti-virus scanner that's different from our desktops. -- http://www.gfi.com/
We were just talking about this tonight (so I'm tickled to see this article).
I saw the orientation instructions on the first three DVD's I got, then never again. But I still faithfully put them facing away from the barcode window. I figure they got a new sorting machine.
Right.. blame it all on the lefties. It's not like they can pass any laws without the approval of the conservatives, and for the last six years, Congress and the President have been satisfying big business and the ultra-conservative right. That big energy bill was all for the benefit of big oil companies which are already making record profits. Whereas the conservatives have decided to say "up yours" to the Kyoto Treaty.
I agree that the current species-protection laws aren't perfect. They are better than nothing, and can be much improved. Experience helps with that.
I'll bet that a lot of the loopholes (not all) were added as amendments to the original proposals. That's how politics works, unfortunately. Convince the ultra-rights that we should actually conserve our resources for our grand-children, and there's have the battle. There's hope! My parents no longer think recycling is a pagan-hippie thing as of last year, though they still think that the Rapture will come in their lifetime, so why conserve.
I was recently looking through Amazon for SQL books, and picked out 5 to get. I stumbled acress bookpool by accident, but the prices were so much lower than Amazon, that I could get overnight shipping and still save $20.
As for why they are more expensive than, say, the latest Xanth novel or Pilates workout book, others have already said. Fewer buyers to pay for the writer's (and publishers) income.
'Bureacracy' began with a quest to get your airline tickets for an upcoming company training trip.
Unfortunately, your mail has been misdelivered.
The initial challenge to retrieve your mail requires getting past an ultra-conservative deaf old lady and her parrot, a malicious llama, an ultra-paranoid, an anti-social philatelist, and an annoying geek. Depositing your advance took Herculean effort, and your health was measured by your (in-game) blood pressure. Listening to your voice messages almost killed you, and every time you mistyped a command your blood pressure went up. Summary and Wikipedia with spoilers
The major labels pocket about 55 cents per dollar sold on iTunes, with minimal overhead. CDs have the additional costs of printing, distributing, and "breakage", as well as the reseller's cut. It looks like $1.70 per CD is "label profit". (Though it also appears that they pocket a total of $7.00 per CD which includes money for "label overhead" and "marketing/promotion".)
It's much cheaper to pay $1 for "War" if you never plan to get anything else by Edwin Star. There's lots of artists that it's worth getting only a couple songs from. For entire albums I go to CDBaby.com-- I'm boycotting the big labels.
Piracy isn't an option for me. It's illegal, and it keeps the major labels in power by keeping their music popular and gives them a leg to stand on in court.
I'll agree that a one-party government is A Bad Thing. Diversity is good, not just for hippies, but because of the improvement through multiple viewpoints, healthy competition, and just a general nipping-at-the-heels.
We used to break up business monopolies for a similar reason. Big companies with too much control stop innovating, and try to retain their power by locking down and digging in. They become bullies, too jealous of their own power.
I'd still be happy if the Democrats took full power for a couple years. I have faith that they'd reverse a lot of the damage (in laws and policies) that the faith-based Republicans have done recently (before they fell under the spell themselves). Not that anyone can magically fix the Iraq debacle, the deficit, the Katrina response, or the environmental damages. But they *could* create good voting protections, return funding for health, science, and education, remove the political propoganda from the science orgs, begin to repair our foreign relations, and air out the overabundance of secrets this administration has created.
On a related note...
"When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong - faster and faster and faster. they put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a bland rush until it's too late." - Frank Herbert, Dune
It's about time that the bazillion dollar OS leader implements the security, speed, and stability features that OS X (and BSD) have been enjoying the last several years. Wow, offloading graphics to the GPU? Running drivers in user space? Audio drivers that won't crash your system? A firewall that works? Running normally without admin rights?
Too bad they're not doing anything about the hundred or so services which start up by default and WANT to take orders from the internet, but I guess that's what the firewall is for.
I just installed OS X 10.3 on a 1999 iBook clamshell (pink), and it's running fine with the built-in Airport card, 3GB hard drive (really!), and 256MB RAM. With transparent windows that >>squeeze smoothly into the dock when you minimize them. I look forward to running Vista on our five year old Dells at work. What? We have to buy new systems?
Way to keep up, Microsoft. (Even assuming that, against historical evidence, the hype is true this time)
Bush is an idiot, and couldn't personally hack a Diebold voting box even though a chimpanzee could.
But he has powerful backers who don't give a shit about what will happen 50 years from now because they are rich enough to protect their own families and ride out anything bad that happens. Saudi family, "I'll give you Ohio" Diebold, evil Cheney, evil Rove. BushCo has a strong record of cronyism, both as a recipient (those companies he was gifted and failed, the national guard schitt), and as a giver (Energy company meetings, Pharma-friendly health care reform, FEMA's Brown, Harriet Myers, and way too many to mention).
Starting the Iraq war took a single-mindedness to invade Iraq. It took a lot of propoganda, funded by the taxpayers and thought up by Rove et al. It required hammering the CIA for shreds of evidence to support their wish, and ignoring all the analysis that Iraq was NOT a threat to the US. Outing Valerie Plame, lieing to the UN, more propoganda to frenzy Americans into a war fever, lieing about the costs, lieing about the insurgency and the possibility of civil war. More propoganda. Politically based classification and leaks.
This was idiotic. Iraq is worse off than before, and America is worse for the change. We have 17,000 dead and wounded soldiers, the Army is seriously weakened, our great-grand-children will have to pay back the debt for this war. There are now MORE terrorists, with better reasons to hate America and Christians.
Does any of this affect Bush? Rove? Cheney? Fox News? Only if they cared about Americans. Their own families will be fine. Their own families will always have roofs over their heads, excellent health care, and very rich contacts.
Yes, they are idiots, and also crafty. It doesn't take James Bond skills to stage an "elaborate" take over of a US election when the voting machines don't have paper records. Just knowledge of which few precincts to do it in, getting your political contacts to approve the machines, and enough money to the right hands. Which are they missing?
A model is broken if you can't use it to predict stuff. Now I am totally not a quantum scientist, but I am given to understand that this "broken" model does a VERY good job at predicting experimental results. So how is that "broken"?
(personally, I think QM feels wrong, and that there's a better model out there somewhere, BUT, I know that much, much smarter people than I have tried hard and failed to find it. And QM works.)
Designed for something != can't be used for anything else.. I have an HP all-in-one OfficeJet, and it's making a great paperweight to keep the recycled cardboard from spilling all over the garage.:)
For a more practical example, there's Linux on XBox, Linux on Mac, Linux on Palm, Linux on iPod...
Slashdot Mirror
Gosh, what political agenda is that? The summary only says that Air Marshals are meeting an arbitrary quota by putting innocent people on the secret watch list. You think this is a right-left issue? Are you fucking nuts?
Why shouldn't a company get teased or worse when their much-over-hyped product's release date slips again and again and again -and- drops all of their promised innovative and ground-breaking features?
Just like Duke Nuke'm?
If Vista had come out when promised, it would have been ground-breaking and innovative. If it had come out only two years late, it would have caught up. But now Windows is so far behind other modern operating systems that Vista will still be underpowered. If it weren't for vendor lock-in, they would have few new customers. So why shouldn't we laugh at them? The overbearing monopoly with more cash-resources than God, is slipping.
Most people have horrible posture when typing, resting their arms on corners, extending their hands far out to the right (past the vestigal number pad) to mouse, keeping their head at an awkward angle that distorts their spine's natural curves..
First off, she should listen to her body. If something hurts, stop doing it. This is the fair warning that her body is giving her. She can take breaks-- walk once around the building, refill her water glass, stretch in place, shake her hands. Use a timer in Outlook that goes off every twenty minutes at first until the symptoms show continued improvement.
Second, she should avoid Repetive Motions as much as possible. Break the habit. Mix things up frequently.
* Switch mousing hands regularly.
* Always rest hands in the lap.
* Adjust or fix the lighting. (reduces muscle tension and eye strain)
* Adjust the monitor height.
* Switch out the effing keyboard for something without an attached number pad.
* Get a keyboard that is the right size for her body frame.
* Attach multiple mice to her system for instant switching.
* Get an adjustable keyboard tray.
* Learn and use keyboard shortcuts.
* Change positions several times a day.
* Get an adjustable monitor stand. (and replace the monster CRT with an LCD)
* Automate her crap work.
Touchpad mice let her use her thumb, pinky, palm, even her knuckles if her hand is being too sensitive. It's easy enough to attach both a touchpad and a normal (but ergonomic) mouse to the system so that she can switch between them according to the action/gesture and what her hand is feeling that moment.
I'm pissed that I missed the boat on the Touchstream keyboard/mice/touchpads, but the TypeMatrix keyboards are a great second-place winner. The keyboards come in a small and large size, with the small one suitable for most people. They also fit correct posture more naturally, by getting rid of the oh-so-stupid staggered key layout, and by separating the left and right sizes a little, and adding extra enter/backspace keys in the center for good measure.
I got one for someone at our work with chronic pain, and she had no problem adjusting to the new layout in hours. Her condition has improved a lot, and she credits the keyboard and better lighting. (I tried to get her to use a touchpad mouse, but it completely ignored her touch.)
At my desk, I have the TypeMatrix keyboard, a regular mouse for precision-work, and a Cirque touchpad for normal mousing. (The touchpad is 9 years old, and still works great.) I put a large box on the side table so that I can also stand and use my personal laptop for the 40% of my work that is internet crap and web-development. When I'm web browsing (er, researching), I can actually kick back in my chair, and do everything just with the touchpad. Change positions!
(I have considered the Kenesis split keyboard but it was too big and pricey for me at the time. I call it a fine third choice.)
To: Jon Smith, Department of Defense
Here is the Word document containing the notes from our discussion last Tuesday, along with a couple images of the product mockups I mentioned. Let's discuss pricing at our next meeting.
Attached: AcmeRockets.doc (2.3MB)
----
Unbeknownst to our government guy, the customized rootkit sends out copies of emails and documents to AcmeRockets so that they can be assured of getting the lowest bid, or maybe even catch the goverment guy surfing Russian pr0n for old-fashioned blackmail.
Same security hole, but that exploit was designed for Office 2003. I'd bet good money that the exploit can be designed for Office 2000 just as easily.
Most of the responses seem to assume that you either need the power or the privacy. Or is there some other reason you need a separate system from your regular laptop?
Is the development you're doing for your work or for yourself?
Why is a laptop a bad option if it's powerful enough and small enough? (You said you hate the waste of space, but it's still smaller than a 1U system. And you weren't complaining that a MacMini was slow-- you said it was the wrong size.)
If you're doing a web app, why not run the server on the same system? (It's easy enough to set up Apache/MySQL/P*/J*)
You can get a MacBook with 2GB RAM, dual-core, fast, small. If you need extra disk space or a non-work environment, you can easily attach and/or boot to an external firewall drive. Or setup a second user to segregate your personal stuff.
Please, let us know.
The CPU isn't always the bottleneck. Sometimes it's the hard drive access time, sometimes the memory bus speed, often it's the video card. It's still got a 5400RPM hard drive, and the same user, so it's unlikely to perform "double or better in all circumstances". A rule of thumb is that the speed of the CPU only contributes about 40% of the perceived performance.
Now for the bad analogy.. If you bought a car that goes twice as fast as your previous car, would it take you half the time to commute to work?
If you need to drink something, God created water for a reason.
;)
Yeah, for martinis shaken, not stirred.
He wants something to drink, not to wash in.
Diet Pepsi tastes fine after a while, and it's cheap and readily available. World-wide, without the parasites. Add a squeeze of FRESH lemon for that extra flavor. Fruit juice has as many calories as soda, and unless it's citris (vitamin C), you may as well have the soda. I like the taste of flavored mineral water, and get the caffiene from coffee and espresso with plenty of sugar and "cream", or Jolt gum.
By the way, I lost 30 pounds in two months after years of getting nowhere dieting. I logged everything I ate, and kept it to under 900 calories. (usually) It was great reinforcement seeing the weight drop off almost every day.. didn't have to eff around with points, special diets, or whatever. I didn't even exercise, though i walked more.
It's real easy to eat healthier when you have to trade off between 1 cup of strawberries or a 1/4 cup of plain white rice. Or a plate of mushrooms vs. an extra 1/2 cup of pasta. Veggie juice and coffee (and fruit and yogurt and nuts) instead of a (grande) mocha. A hamburger without cheese or mayo, OR a third of those fries on the side. Spices and non-calorie sauces help a lot. I ate well, and savored everything. But whatever, if YOU track those calories, YOU'LL make your own choices.
It worked only if I ate every few hours. Breakfast (150), lunch (250), snack (75), dinner (300), snack (75) + some here and there. And as long as I figured out the calories for everything I ate. (Though I didn't bother writing down leafy veggies)
I've kept it off 6 months now, and I'm on the last notch of my belts (down 3 notches), so there!
The health risk appears to be 1) if you don't have the weight to lose or 2) if you go much longer than a month then you might get ??? stones. (In the interests of Full disclosure.)
Good luck!
Maybe I'm doing this the hard way, but I have a perl script crawl our (40) systems to get file stats for firefox.exe (via \\system\c$). It compares the version (or size+date) of each system's firefox.exe to stats I get from an updated system.
I send out an email to everyone telling them how to do the update (with recycled instructions). After a reasonable amount of time, I rerun the script and start bugging the stragglers.
I sometimes get complaints, but I remind them that the alternatives are either 1) I go around and kick them off the systems to do the updates, or 2) I force them to log off at night (which they don't like because they lose all of their settings and command histories). They prefer to do the updates on their own terms.
I find this is easily modified to monitor Real, Quicktime, Adobe and such which have interactive updates.
There's a mandatory recycling fee for monitors in California. Screens between 15" and 35" have an $8 fee (CRT and LCD). This only started last year, so it's misleading to say that just because you were charged a state-imposed tax on a newly purchased system, that it wasn't "free" to recycle your POS Pentium-III system. Heck, everyone has to charge the tax, but you don't see Fry's begging to take back your old systems*.
.gov site: http://www.erecycle.org/fee.htm
From the
Or clearer details: http://www.mpccorp.com/about/california_fee.html
* Actually, they might. I didn't check.
I just went through this process a few months ago, and ended up with GFI Anti-spam/anti-virus for our underworked Exchange 2003 server (about a dozen users). I'm pretty happy with it. It's one of the few that uses a Baysian mail filter (trained by dropping emails into public folders). It also has auto-whitelisting (from outgoing emails), and a lot of other practical features, and just keeps working in the background. And reasonably priced. It's an extra bonus having a mail anti-virus scanner that's different from our desktops. -- http://www.gfi.com/
We were just talking about this tonight (so I'm tickled to see this article).
I saw the orientation instructions on the first three DVD's I got, then never again. But I still faithfully put them facing away from the barcode window. I figure they got a new sorting machine.
Right.. blame it all on the lefties. It's not like they can pass any laws without the approval of the conservatives, and for the last six years, Congress and the President have been satisfying big business and the ultra-conservative right. That big energy bill was all for the benefit of big oil companies which are already making record profits. Whereas the conservatives have decided to say "up yours" to the Kyoto Treaty.
I agree that the current species-protection laws aren't perfect. They are better than nothing, and can be much improved. Experience helps with that.
I'll bet that a lot of the loopholes (not all) were added as amendments to the original proposals. That's how politics works, unfortunately. Convince the ultra-rights that we should actually conserve our resources for our grand-children, and there's have the battle. There's hope! My parents no longer think recycling is a pagan-hippie thing as of last year, though they still think that the Rapture will come in their lifetime, so why conserve.
You've been lied to.
I was recently looking through Amazon for SQL books, and picked out 5 to get. I stumbled acress bookpool by accident, but the prices were so much lower than Amazon, that I could get overnight shipping and still save $20 .
As for why they are more expensive than, say, the latest Xanth novel or Pilates workout book, others have already said. Fewer buyers to pay for the writer's (and publishers) income.
Wow. That's gotta be the prettiest (artsy) site I've seen that has actual content. You're right though, it's not made to be quick-in-quick-out.
'Bureacracy' began with a quest to get your airline tickets for an upcoming company training trip.
Unfortunately, your mail has been misdelivered.
The initial challenge to retrieve your mail requires getting past an ultra-conservative deaf old lady and her parrot, a malicious llama, an ultra-paranoid, an anti-social philatelist, and an annoying geek. Depositing your advance took Herculean effort, and your health was measured by your (in-game) blood pressure. Listening to your voice messages almost killed you, and every time you mistyped a command your blood pressure went up. Summary and Wikipedia with spoilers
What is the label's profit on each?
The major labels pocket about 55 cents per dollar sold on iTunes, with minimal overhead. CDs have the additional costs of printing, distributing, and "breakage", as well as the reseller's cut. It looks like $1.70 per CD is "label profit". (Though it also appears that they pocket a total of $7.00 per CD which includes money for "label overhead" and "marketing/promotion".)
Great analogy! You're like a.. like a SHARK! :)
It's much cheaper to pay $1 for "War" if you never plan to get anything else by Edwin Star. There's lots of artists that it's worth getting only a couple songs from. For entire albums I go to CDBaby.com-- I'm boycotting the big labels.
Piracy isn't an option for me. It's illegal, and it keeps the major labels in power by keeping their music popular and gives them a leg to stand on in court.
I'll agree that a one-party government is A Bad Thing. Diversity is good, not just for hippies, but because of the improvement through multiple viewpoints, healthy competition, and just a general nipping-at-the-heels.
We used to break up business monopolies for a similar reason. Big companies with too much control stop innovating, and try to retain their power by locking down and digging in. They become bullies, too jealous of their own power.
I'd still be happy if the Democrats took full power for a couple years. I have faith that they'd reverse a lot of the damage (in laws and policies) that the faith-based Republicans have done recently (before they fell under the spell themselves). Not that anyone can magically fix the Iraq debacle, the deficit, the Katrina response, or the environmental damages. But they *could* create good voting protections, return funding for health, science, and education, remove the political propoganda from the science orgs, begin to repair our foreign relations, and air out the overabundance of secrets this administration has created.
On a related note...
"When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong - faster and faster and faster. they put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a bland rush until it's too late." - Frank Herbert, Dune
It's about time that the bazillion dollar OS leader implements the security, speed, and stability features that OS X (and BSD) have been enjoying the last several years. Wow, offloading graphics to the GPU? Running drivers in user space? Audio drivers that won't crash your system? A firewall that works? Running normally without admin rights?
Too bad they're not doing anything about the hundred or so services which start up by default and WANT to take orders from the internet, but I guess that's what the firewall is for.
I just installed OS X 10.3 on a 1999 iBook clamshell (pink), and it's running fine with the built-in Airport card, 3GB hard drive (really!), and 256MB RAM. With transparent windows that >>squeeze smoothly into the dock when you minimize them. I look forward to running Vista on our five year old Dells at work. What? We have to buy new systems?
Way to keep up, Microsoft. (Even assuming that, against historical evidence, the hype is true this time)
Bush is an idiot, and couldn't personally hack a Diebold voting box even though a chimpanzee could.
But he has powerful backers who don't give a shit about what will happen 50 years from now because they are rich enough to protect their own families and ride out anything bad that happens. Saudi family, "I'll give you Ohio" Diebold, evil Cheney, evil Rove. BushCo has a strong record of cronyism, both as a recipient (those companies he was gifted and failed, the national guard schitt), and as a giver (Energy company meetings, Pharma-friendly health care reform, FEMA's Brown, Harriet Myers, and way too many to mention).
Starting the Iraq war took a single-mindedness to invade Iraq. It took a lot of propoganda, funded by the taxpayers and thought up by Rove et al. It required hammering the CIA for shreds of evidence to support their wish, and ignoring all the analysis that Iraq was NOT a threat to the US. Outing Valerie Plame, lieing to the UN, more propoganda to frenzy Americans into a war fever, lieing about the costs, lieing about the insurgency and the possibility of civil war. More propoganda. Politically based classification and leaks.
This was idiotic. Iraq is worse off than before, and America is worse for the change. We have 17,000 dead and wounded soldiers, the Army is seriously weakened, our great-grand-children will have to pay back the debt for this war. There are now MORE terrorists, with better reasons to hate America and Christians.
Does any of this affect Bush? Rove? Cheney? Fox News? Only if they cared about Americans. Their own families will be fine. Their own families will always have roofs over their heads, excellent health care, and very rich contacts.
Yes, they are idiots, and also crafty. It doesn't take James Bond skills to stage an "elaborate" take over of a US election when the voting machines don't have paper records. Just knowledge of which few precincts to do it in, getting your political contacts to approve the machines, and enough money to the right hands. Which are they missing?
A model is broken if you can't use it to predict stuff. Now I am totally not a quantum scientist, but I am given to understand that this "broken" model does a VERY good job at predicting experimental results. So how is that "broken"?
(personally, I think QM feels wrong, and that there's a better model out there somewhere, BUT, I know that much, much smarter people than I have tried hard and failed to find it. And QM works.)
Designed for something != can't be used for anything else.. I have an HP all-in-one OfficeJet, and it's making a great paperweight to keep the recycled cardboard from spilling all over the garage. :)
For a more practical example, there's Linux on XBox, Linux on Mac, Linux on Palm, Linux on iPod...
Hey! Linux on AGP cards!