It is nowhere near 1mpg. There is a loss, but you cannot measure it outside of a lab because there are so many other variables to control. Over 100,000 miles it might make the difference of 1 gallon of gas, but I'd be surprised if it was that much.
Towing my boat (~1000 lbs) doesn't make a noticeable difference in my gas milage. In fact normally I get better milage towing the boat, because the trips where I tow the boat I'm drive 65mph, while most other trips I drive 55mph. (I normally take the boat to lakes far away, while the rest of my trips are more local)
Where does your water come from. If you have city water, and the city is stocked up on diesel fuel for their power backup, you are just fine.
My water comes from my own well though. When my power goes out I have at most 6 gallons of water that has to get through. (and it may be just a cup!) This isn't counting the water heater pipes, which I could drain if I had to, but I only have a tiny amount of easy water. I can't waste it on a pump.
If my sump pump ran often I'd be investing in a battery backup sump pump. They are not that expensive.
If you have food, water, and medicine you can trade with someone who has plenty of firearms, but no food. My gun can get my more food, but only to a limited extent before I hunt out the neighborhood. My gargen can get me food, but not in winter (and it takes carefully planning to get enough food for year round use from a garden).
Best is to have enough food to get through the emergencies you are likely to face, plus a plan to get to the country if civilization won't come back. Farmers won't be able to farm 3000 acres of land without civilization so you should be able to get enough land to survive (but no more...) from them.
My mandolin has never required power to produce entertainment. And a group of them in the neighborhood (better yet a guitar, fiddle, and washboard) is enough to entertain the entire neighborhood.
Actually I'd recommend the Wal-Mart bird shot anyway. At close range it is enough to take care of the problem, and at long range it is harmless. The advantage is the courts will look at what you use. If your ammo has an ugly label you are likely to be convicted for planning to kill the intruder. If the ammo has a target or hunting label (even if more powerful that the ugly ammo), they will end up dropping charges because you are a hunter who grabbed what was handy in the heat of the moment.
I hope this is never a consideration, but when preparing for something you need to be careful. Make sure you practice with the gun at targets once in a while, so you can claim your main reason for owning the gun is target practice, but since you have it you use it for defense.
I have a inverter that doesn't work because the battery is dead. I can trade it in, but that hardly covers the shipping costs, so why bother? I'll just buy new (for essentially the same cost), and I have an inverter that I can work with. The worst case is I completely destroy the inverter, in which case I'm out nothing.
The inverter in most UPSes put out much better waveforms than the inverter you buy otherwise. So I'd prefer to use the UPS inverter anyway.
Also, do you have a better - scientifically accepted model as to a stars formation?
To nitpic, you asked the question wrong. It should be "Do you have a model of star formation that doesn't contradict any known facts, that you are working on getting accepted?" Clearly whatever his model is, it is not currently accepted. Science itself will admit the possibility that the current theories are wrong. So we need to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, if by some chance he has a model that is different, but not flawed in any known way, then perhaps it is correct and the rest of us need to revise our understanding of the universe.
More likely he is an idiot saying anything that sounds good in hopes of getting modded up. Still he could be smarter than Einstein, but not recognized yet.
$44/month for POTS back when I had it a few years ago. Which is why I turned it off as soon as I found something other than DSL (which was also too expensive, and in the same range as a T1 in most other cities if you wanted one static IP) for my internet.
Prices are not the same all over the country, much less the world. Verizon already has this feature (in some areas only?), but SBC never does. Therefore there is no analysis that applies to everyone. Don't try it. Look at your bottom line, which is what counts in the end anyway.
but then turn around and make biodiesel out of those soybeans, you've accomplished nothing.
Not true, you have done several things: You have eliminated the "fossil fuel" use that the biodiesel replaces. This is already a net gain. Since most of the plant is carbon that is not not converted, you have also sunk some of the CO2 into carbon in the soil. You have also given jobs to farmers. With any luck they will be less evil than the oil companies. (Can they be worse?)
(assuming you can make biodiesel without burning regular oil/coal -- which is something we havn't done yet.
Where do you get this idea? Sure the tractor burns oil now, but biodiesel from several plans is energy positive on a 4x scale, so you can run the tractors and the conversion from your output, once you get the process started. Perhaps we haven't done without oil/coal TODAY, but the process is in the early stages, and shows promise that it can bootstrap itself up once it reaches a critical mass.
If Microsoft was smart they would have expert witnesses who will appear in court for you, to testify that running as administrator is bad practice. Thus the program that requires the user to run as administrator is defective, and in violation of various state laws.
Of course Microsoft would have to fix their own software first, so they are unlikely to do it. Still they should. Software needs administrator and isn't designed for administrator use only is defective.
I drive in the twin cities every day. I've been forced to do what you say more than once. Well not quite, I always drive the speed limit (when safe, when it isn't safe I'll go slower). All too often I'll pull into the left lane to pass, only to have the other lane accelerate to the speed limit. However in the other lane everyone is following so close that I cannot safely move my car into their lane! Thus I'm stuck going slow in the fast lane. (I refuse to get a speeding ticket)
It doesn't help that I often have to take left exists (35w to cross town, 94->694, the tunnel), where I have no choice but to leave the right lane where I'm more comfortable, to get to the lane I need to be in.
Sorry for getting in your way. I try to stick to the right, but reality often mean I cannot do it. Just sit back and relax. Even if you could pass me instantly, the difference between 55 and 85 on any commute only works out to a few minutes difference in your total commute.
Most of your commute time is wasted at a dead stop on the freeway. Doesn't matter which lane you are in, every freeway (Except 94 north of Minneapolis where there is always plenty of room for you to pass) is stop and go, during rush hour. That is where you are wasting your time.
You might wish to look into the bus. Though if your commute is like mine, that can't be done.
Well yeah, but you miss the point: you cannot do anything about tailgaters except set a good example. You can however prevent half the tailgating related accidents you could be in by not tailgating yourself. By leaving a gap in front of you, you can ensure that you at least are not going to get into accidents where the front end of your car hits the rear end of the next car. It is still bad when you are rear-ended, but not as bad as being rear-ended, while at the same time rear-ending someone yourself.
Of course not tailgating won't prevent 100% of accidents. It will greatly reduce the number of them though, and many of the rest would be less serious. Therefore I maintain a large following distance.
You still miss the point. Having only code as documentation is no different from having plenty of documentation in a language you don't know. Someone who only knows Russian will gain no more from English documentation than someone who knows only English will gain from the source code. Until someone with the specialized ability to read what exists writes documentation in your language you can do nothing.
If you want documentation for something where only source exists, you hire me (or someone like me) who can translate source code into English. If the only documentation is in Russian you can hire someone who knows Russian to translate it into English. (In either case a good translator will play with the program himself to get an idea of how it works as well as reading the documentation that exists)
As for the doctor: at some point in his education he puts a knife to a live human for the first time.
the major problem is still that the bulk of the energy being used, regardless of the source, is going to be spent keeping the vehicle in the air instead of moving it towards its desitnation.
Not really. Airplanes are built to fly. Staying in the air doesn't take much energy. Small airplanes can get the equivalent of 30mpg. (you are running a small engine in the range where it is most efficient most of the time, unlike a car where the engine is typically oversized) This while flying at 90 mph.
And watch out if your "engine" dies for whatever reason.
No more than if the engine dies on the freeway. Less because in 3d space there is a lot more room between planes (even if everyone was flying to work during rush hour, one person per plane), so you have more room to deal wit the problem. Radio contact means that you declare an emergency and everyone knows to get out of your way. Airplanes to not instantly drop from the sky at 9.8m/s/s, they glide down slowly. Sure you can't go far, but there is plenty of time and room to choose where you come down. Pilots are tested in this exact situation. I'll bet your drivers examiner never shut off the engine while you were on the freeway (I never got over 25 mph on my drivers test).
Gasses in your crankcase are a problem if you engine never gets warm. That is you drive in stop and go traffic, or only for short trips. Thus those are called sever service and require oil changes every 3000 miles if that is how you drive. Freeway driving for long distances gets your engine oil hot enough to distil all the water out of the oil, and that water then goes through the PVC system.
Sterlings do not respond well to throttle changes. Step on it, and 1 minute latter you go... (not quite that bad, but bad enough) Worse than driving a turbo diesel, and those have trouble getting across intersections safely.
A sterling makes sense in a electro-hybrid system (one where the drive wheels are not mechanically connected to the engine, the engine drives a generator, charging batteries that drive the wheels), where they can achieve 60% efficiency in the lab - greater than the theoretical limits for a standard engine.
Sterlings work best on high temperature differences, you need a big sterling to get anything useful from the output of your cooling system. (Not that it can't be done - sterlings can run just from your hand) So while it can work in theory, it isn't practical. You don't get enough useful power to make up for the extra costs.
I'll grant that source code is useless to your grandpa. However it is useful documentation to me. I'm a programmer by trade, I have the specialized training to read that source code.
I'm not a medical doctor by trade. Medical doctors have a large set of documentation that I cannot read - my high school biology just isn't up to understanding it. Should we call all those books the doctor reads worthless because the average person cannot read it, or are they useful even though the average person cannot read it?
Just because 99% of the population cannot read some set of documentation does not make it worthless.
Despite giving on convincing show of being a high power executive (which you could easily be, I don't know as this is the internet), you don't understand business.
Business is about investment. You invest time and money now, to make it up latter. You buy a machine because you can sell the results of the machine. My boss just spent 6 months paying me to write software that he hasn't made a penny on yet. Soon though he will release it, and we plan on making money selling it. In the mean time he is paying me to work on the next project (or fix bugs in the old).
If you are not willing to invest money to build FOSS you should not be surprised that it takes a long time to get to the point where you want it. After all, those of us who are working on it, are working on it to fill our needs first.
Example: Koffice has poor Microsoft Word import filters. The developers would like them, but it is a complex task, and there are other things they want more. As soon as someone comes up with the money to pay someone for a few months/years for filters someone will write them. Until then you will have to wait until someone finally gets around to fixing whatever bugs you have.
FOSS developers care about what they want first. We do it for fun, and we will add a feature you like if it is interesting, but if we don't want it it won't happen no matter how interesting it is. You can throw money at some of us for that feature if you really want it. (normally. Sometimes a feature only sounds good and will be rejected no matter what, but this only happens where there is a technical flaw)
Actually the builders can. However contractor doesn't care. It takes several hours to correct for an off level foundataion (when pouring cement it is impossible to get things level - block is much better for level). Any crew can correct for these things, but since the owner won't see it, the contractor won't pay for it (profit), and the builders can't afford to do it for free (there isn't that much profit in building houses)
"Spike" may not be smart, but the forman is, and the forman knows Spike's limits. (Trust me, I've worked with many stupid people) The forman will check the things Spike has trouble with.
Not really. Carpenters know a bunch of rules. Understanding them is optional.
When I was in construction one summer the only rules I needed was the number 1.42 which when multiplied by the height of the rafter resulted in the diagonal brace needed to support it vertical. Now if you know trig you can figure out exactly why we use that number, but the guys didn't know or care - their job was to build the house, not understand the math.
We never used a calculator to do the above math. We just wrote out on the rafter itself, and did it by hand. Basic third grade math.
The forman had a few more rules for the stair stringers, but there is a lot of fudge involved too. (Stairs can only have so much riser, by code, and raiser plus run is some factor. Just try numbers until something works for your height)
Sure the rules were derived from trig, but we didn't know them. Most of us passed geometry, and could have at one time figured them out, but it wasn't required to do the job, so we didn't.
For $100B, you could replace 5 million government vehicles with hybrids and save 500 million gallons of gas.
I don't know if those numbers add up (many government trucks are big rigs of some sort, and run on diesel. (So bio-diesel would be a better place to start than a hybrid conversion)
Assuming they add up though, the government replaces their vehicles on a regular basis. If the government refused to buy anything but hybrids (Preferably running E-85!) to replace their cars, in just a few years they would have replaced their entire fleet for just 25Billion extra. (That is they were going to spend most of that 100 billion anyway, so it isn't fair to count it again)
Bush was the better of the two people willing to represent me and had a chance. (Actually I voted for a third party, but if I didn't I'd have voted for Bush)
I'm not willing to be president of the US. Even if everyone in the US wrote my name on the ballot next election I would refuse to serve (I won't be 35 by the next election so I couldn't serve anyway). I do not want the job. I'm not the only person who doesn't want the job.
As Douglas Adams said, "Anyone who wants to be president should not be allowed to be president." However we can only choose who are willing to be president, so there is no way to get a good president.
Yes you need a laptop. Very useful for meetings, everytime the subject goes to something uninteresting you can get work done, and then pull back to the meeting instantly when it becomes useful. Not as productive as you would be when not at the meeting, but a lot more interesting and productive than the typical meeting.
When in a meeting with co-workers (the boss is not there), it is more useful, you can take notes, look-up code, or search for information without leaving the meeting.
Now if the choice is 1 laptop, or a desktop with 2 monitors, take the laptop. However a laptop is very useful even if it never leaves work.
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It is nowhere near 1mpg. There is a loss, but you cannot measure it outside of a lab because there are so many other variables to control. Over 100,000 miles it might make the difference of 1 gallon of gas, but I'd be surprised if it was that much.
Towing my boat (~1000 lbs) doesn't make a noticeable difference in my gas milage. In fact normally I get better milage towing the boat, because the trips where I tow the boat I'm drive 65mph, while most other trips I drive 55mph. (I normally take the boat to lakes far away, while the rest of my trips are more local)
Where does your water come from. If you have city water, and the city is stocked up on diesel fuel for their power backup, you are just fine.
My water comes from my own well though. When my power goes out I have at most 6 gallons of water that has to get through. (and it may be just a cup!) This isn't counting the water heater pipes, which I could drain if I had to, but I only have a tiny amount of easy water. I can't waste it on a pump.
If my sump pump ran often I'd be investing in a battery backup sump pump. They are not that expensive.
If you have food, water, and medicine you can trade with someone who has plenty of firearms, but no food. My gun can get my more food, but only to a limited extent before I hunt out the neighborhood. My gargen can get me food, but not in winter (and it takes carefully planning to get enough food for year round use from a garden).
Best is to have enough food to get through the emergencies you are likely to face, plus a plan to get to the country if civilization won't come back. Farmers won't be able to farm 3000 acres of land without civilization so you should be able to get enough land to survive (but no more...) from them.
My mandolin has never required power to produce entertainment. And a group of them in the neighborhood (better yet a guitar, fiddle, and washboard) is enough to entertain the entire neighborhood.
Actually I'd recommend the Wal-Mart bird shot anyway. At close range it is enough to take care of the problem, and at long range it is harmless. The advantage is the courts will look at what you use. If your ammo has an ugly label you are likely to be convicted for planning to kill the intruder. If the ammo has a target or hunting label (even if more powerful that the ugly ammo), they will end up dropping charges because you are a hunter who grabbed what was handy in the heat of the moment.
I hope this is never a consideration, but when preparing for something you need to be careful. Make sure you practice with the gun at targets once in a while, so you can claim your main reason for owning the gun is target practice, but since you have it you use it for defense.
I have a inverter that doesn't work because the battery is dead. I can trade it in, but that hardly covers the shipping costs, so why bother? I'll just buy new (for essentially the same cost), and I have an inverter that I can work with. The worst case is I completely destroy the inverter, in which case I'm out nothing.
The inverter in most UPSes put out much better waveforms than the inverter you buy otherwise. So I'd prefer to use the UPS inverter anyway.
I have seen FM crystal sets. A simple google search would have told you this.
Also, do you have a better - scientifically accepted model as to a stars formation?
To nitpic, you asked the question wrong. It should be "Do you have a model of star formation that doesn't contradict any known facts, that you are working on getting accepted?" Clearly whatever his model is, it is not currently accepted. Science itself will admit the possibility that the current theories are wrong. So we need to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, if by some chance he has a model that is different, but not flawed in any known way, then perhaps it is correct and the rest of us need to revise our understanding of the universe.
More likely he is an idiot saying anything that sounds good in hopes of getting modded up. Still he could be smarter than Einstein, but not recognized yet.
$44/month for POTS back when I had it a few years ago. Which is why I turned it off as soon as I found something other than DSL (which was also too expensive, and in the same range as a T1 in most other cities if you wanted one static IP) for my internet.
Prices are not the same all over the country, much less the world. Verizon already has this feature (in some areas only?), but SBC never does. Therefore there is no analysis that applies to everyone. Don't try it. Look at your bottom line, which is what counts in the end anyway.
but then turn around and make biodiesel out of those soybeans, you've accomplished nothing.
Not true, you have done several things: You have eliminated the "fossil fuel" use that the biodiesel replaces. This is already a net gain. Since most of the plant is carbon that is not not converted, you have also sunk some of the CO2 into carbon in the soil. You have also given jobs to farmers. With any luck they will be less evil than the oil companies. (Can they be worse?)
(assuming you can make biodiesel without burning regular oil/coal -- which is something we havn't done yet.
Where do you get this idea? Sure the tractor burns oil now, but biodiesel from several plans is energy positive on a 4x scale, so you can run the tractors and the conversion from your output, once you get the process started. Perhaps we haven't done without oil/coal TODAY, but the process is in the early stages, and shows promise that it can bootstrap itself up once it reaches a critical mass.
If Microsoft was smart they would have expert witnesses who will appear in court for you, to testify that running as administrator is bad practice. Thus the program that requires the user to run as administrator is defective, and in violation of various state laws.
Of course Microsoft would have to fix their own software first, so they are unlikely to do it. Still they should. Software needs administrator and isn't designed for administrator use only is defective.
I drive in the twin cities every day. I've been forced to do what you say more than once. Well not quite, I always drive the speed limit (when safe, when it isn't safe I'll go slower). All too often I'll pull into the left lane to pass, only to have the other lane accelerate to the speed limit. However in the other lane everyone is following so close that I cannot safely move my car into their lane! Thus I'm stuck going slow in the fast lane. (I refuse to get a speeding ticket)
It doesn't help that I often have to take left exists (35w to cross town, 94->694, the tunnel), where I have no choice but to leave the right lane where I'm more comfortable, to get to the lane I need to be in.
Sorry for getting in your way. I try to stick to the right, but reality often mean I cannot do it. Just sit back and relax. Even if you could pass me instantly, the difference between 55 and 85 on any commute only works out to a few minutes difference in your total commute.
Most of your commute time is wasted at a dead stop on the freeway. Doesn't matter which lane you are in, every freeway (Except 94 north of Minneapolis where there is always plenty of room for you to pass) is stop and go, during rush hour. That is where you are wasting your time.
You might wish to look into the bus. Though if your commute is like mine, that can't be done.
Well yeah, but you miss the point: you cannot do anything about tailgaters except set a good example. You can however prevent half the tailgating related accidents you could be in by not tailgating yourself. By leaving a gap in front of you, you can ensure that you at least are not going to get into accidents where the front end of your car hits the rear end of the next car. It is still bad when you are rear-ended, but not as bad as being rear-ended, while at the same time rear-ending someone yourself.
Of course not tailgating won't prevent 100% of accidents. It will greatly reduce the number of them though, and many of the rest would be less serious. Therefore I maintain a large following distance.
You still miss the point. Having only code as documentation is no different from having plenty of documentation in a language you don't know. Someone who only knows Russian will gain no more from English documentation than someone who knows only English will gain from the source code. Until someone with the specialized ability to read what exists writes documentation in your language you can do nothing.
If you want documentation for something where only source exists, you hire me (or someone like me) who can translate source code into English. If the only documentation is in Russian you can hire someone who knows Russian to translate it into English. (In either case a good translator will play with the program himself to get an idea of how it works as well as reading the documentation that exists)
As for the doctor: at some point in his education he puts a knife to a live human for the first time.
the major problem is still that the bulk of the energy being used, regardless of the source, is going to be spent keeping the vehicle in the air instead of moving it towards its desitnation.
Not really. Airplanes are built to fly. Staying in the air doesn't take much energy. Small airplanes can get the equivalent of 30mpg. (you are running a small engine in the range where it is most efficient most of the time, unlike a car where the engine is typically oversized) This while flying at 90 mph.
And watch out if your "engine" dies for whatever reason.
No more than if the engine dies on the freeway. Less because in 3d space there is a lot more room between planes (even if everyone was flying to work during rush hour, one person per plane), so you have more room to deal wit the problem. Radio contact means that you declare an emergency and everyone knows to get out of your way. Airplanes to not instantly drop from the sky at 9.8m/s/s, they glide down slowly. Sure you can't go far, but there is plenty of time and room to choose where you come down. Pilots are tested in this exact situation. I'll bet your drivers examiner never shut off the engine while you were on the freeway (I never got over 25 mph on my drivers test).
Gasses in your crankcase are a problem if you engine never gets warm. That is you drive in stop and go traffic, or only for short trips. Thus those are called sever service and require oil changes every 3000 miles if that is how you drive. Freeway driving for long distances gets your engine oil hot enough to distil all the water out of the oil, and that water then goes through the PVC system.
Sterlings do not respond well to throttle changes. Step on it, and 1 minute latter you go... (not quite that bad, but bad enough) Worse than driving a turbo diesel, and those have trouble getting across intersections safely.
A sterling makes sense in a electro-hybrid system (one where the drive wheels are not mechanically connected to the engine, the engine drives a generator, charging batteries that drive the wheels), where they can achieve 60% efficiency in the lab - greater than the theoretical limits for a standard engine.
Sterlings work best on high temperature differences, you need a big sterling to get anything useful from the output of your cooling system. (Not that it can't be done - sterlings can run just from your hand) So while it can work in theory, it isn't practical. You don't get enough useful power to make up for the extra costs.
I'll grant that source code is useless to your grandpa. However it is useful documentation to me. I'm a programmer by trade, I have the specialized training to read that source code.
I'm not a medical doctor by trade. Medical doctors have a large set of documentation that I cannot read - my high school biology just isn't up to understanding it. Should we call all those books the doctor reads worthless because the average person cannot read it, or are they useful even though the average person cannot read it?
Just because 99% of the population cannot read some set of documentation does not make it worthless.
Despite giving on convincing show of being a high power executive (which you could easily be, I don't know as this is the internet), you don't understand business.
Business is about investment. You invest time and money now, to make it up latter. You buy a machine because you can sell the results of the machine. My boss just spent 6 months paying me to write software that he hasn't made a penny on yet. Soon though he will release it, and we plan on making money selling it. In the mean time he is paying me to work on the next project (or fix bugs in the old).
If you are not willing to invest money to build FOSS you should not be surprised that it takes a long time to get to the point where you want it. After all, those of us who are working on it, are working on it to fill our needs first.
Example: Koffice has poor Microsoft Word import filters. The developers would like them, but it is a complex task, and there are other things they want more. As soon as someone comes up with the money to pay someone for a few months/years for filters someone will write them. Until then you will have to wait until someone finally gets around to fixing whatever bugs you have.
FOSS developers care about what they want first. We do it for fun, and we will add a feature you like if it is interesting, but if we don't want it it won't happen no matter how interesting it is. You can throw money at some of us for that feature if you really want it. (normally. Sometimes a feature only sounds good and will be rejected no matter what, but this only happens where there is a technical flaw)
Actually the builders can. However contractor doesn't care. It takes several hours to correct for an off level foundataion (when pouring cement it is impossible to get things level - block is much better for level). Any crew can correct for these things, but since the owner won't see it, the contractor won't pay for it (profit), and the builders can't afford to do it for free (there isn't that much profit in building houses)
"Spike" may not be smart, but the forman is, and the forman knows Spike's limits. (Trust me, I've worked with many stupid people) The forman will check the things Spike has trouble with.
Not really. Carpenters know a bunch of rules. Understanding them is optional.
When I was in construction one summer the only rules I needed was the number 1.42 which when multiplied by the height of the rafter resulted in the diagonal brace needed to support it vertical. Now if you know trig you can figure out exactly why we use that number, but the guys didn't know or care - their job was to build the house, not understand the math.
We never used a calculator to do the above math. We just wrote out on the rafter itself, and did it by hand. Basic third grade math.
The forman had a few more rules for the stair stringers, but there is a lot of fudge involved too. (Stairs can only have so much riser, by code, and raiser plus run is some factor. Just try numbers until something works for your height)
Sure the rules were derived from trig, but we didn't know them. Most of us passed geometry, and could have at one time figured them out, but it wasn't required to do the job, so we didn't.
For $100B, you could replace 5 million government vehicles with hybrids and save 500 million gallons of gas.
I don't know if those numbers add up (many government trucks are big rigs of some sort, and run on diesel. (So bio-diesel would be a better place to start than a hybrid conversion)
Assuming they add up though, the government replaces their vehicles on a regular basis. If the government refused to buy anything but hybrids (Preferably running E-85!) to replace their cars, in just a few years they would have replaced their entire fleet for just 25Billion extra. (That is they were going to spend most of that 100 billion anyway, so it isn't fair to count it again)
Bush was the better of the two people willing to represent me and had a chance. (Actually I voted for a third party, but if I didn't I'd have voted for Bush)
I'm not willing to be president of the US. Even if everyone in the US wrote my name on the ballot next election I would refuse to serve (I won't be 35 by the next election so I couldn't serve anyway). I do not want the job. I'm not the only person who doesn't want the job.
As Douglas Adams said, "Anyone who wants to be president should not be allowed to be president." However we can only choose who are willing to be president, so there is no way to get a good president.
Yes you need a laptop. Very useful for meetings, everytime the subject goes to something uninteresting you can get work done, and then pull back to the meeting instantly when it becomes useful. Not as productive as you would be when not at the meeting, but a lot more interesting and productive than the typical meeting.
When in a meeting with co-workers (the boss is not there), it is more useful, you can take notes, look-up code, or search for information without leaving the meeting.
Now if the choice is 1 laptop, or a desktop with 2 monitors, take the laptop. However a laptop is very useful even if it never leaves work.
I don't. I represent myself, and 1/300millionth of the US population. Nother else.
If you choose to let TV represent me, that is your problem.