I eagerly await the day when my local police drive performance-challenged electric/hybrids... But as a taxpayer I will not allow my local police to switch over to Teslas starting at $100K/each...
$100,000/yr is more than 84% of American households earn in a year, according to none other than wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States). Your $200,000/yr couple are it the top 5% of wage earners.
You are not as average as you want to believe.
Also, your Prius came with a $2,000 tax incentive through 2003... (http://www.bankrate.com/finance/auto/are-you-ready-for-a-hybrid-vehicle.aspx)
So, to re-cap, someone earring in the top 15% of all Americans bought a car with a $2,000 tax break - this seems to fall in line with the premise of the original article...
Why is the Gov't funding (not incentivizing through tax breaks, but pouring billions down the gullet of a new industry) the development of electric cars?
At $41K, a sub-compact plug-in car is insane, especially when you consider that what, 50% of all electricity runs on coal, the poster child for dirty industries AND something this administration is hoping to tax and regulate out of existence.
What happened to GM's hydrogen car? It should have been coming to market in the next 12 months and Shell had committed to installing hydrogen "stills" at every Shell station to support the car...
It's a shame our "Car Czar" has no experience building ANYTHIG, let alone automobiles...
What are you on? Grades are the result of individual effort, not class-averaged calculations! I have attended schools where the grades were done on a curve, but that was because there was so much "headroom" in the tests to allow exceptional students to shine that (I kid you not), a grade of 15 out of 100 would typically be a "C" grade.
Those appelations people ascribe to letter grades are not binding, because it says "average" doesn't mean half the class did better than you and half the class did worse - it is an indication of the effort of the individual.
I'd be interested to see what 50% more money would do for performance - I'm thinking a low-end i3 system would be possible, given a cheap enough case... A suitable Intel MB can be had for $100, third-party MBs go for as little as $80. The i3-530 CPU can be had for another $100, figure $55 for 2 Gigs of DDR3 RAM and that leaves $45 for case/PS.
Drop the requirement for a case/PS (say you're upgrading an older desktop), you can go to 4 Gig of RAM and still be under $300.
The system I'm imagining would be an Intel i3-530, Intel DH55TC w/ whatever 4 Gig DDR3 is on sale for $100 or less...
Atom MBs are nice, but they are built fo rcertain performance/cost/environmental constraints - they are a compromise system for a desktop system.
You pay a premium for the Mini-ITX form-factor.
You pay a premium for it's low-power envelope.
You pay a premium for the fanless operation.
An Atom CPU core is not performance equal to a Core2Duo or similar AMD offering.
At $89 (list) a top-of-the-line D510MO is a very nice tool to address certain problems, but that extra $20 can buy a much more capable MB & CPU/Heatsink combo, either the AMD solution they propose (or anything similar) or an Intel E5300 and $40-45 MB.
You could save $20 or so, and probably upgrade the RAM to 2 Gigs of DDR2 RAM, the performance would be compromised pretty severely, A mATX MB offers the chance to add (typically) a 16x PCIe graphics card, and a PCI or 1x PCIe (or both) add-in card. Also, the ability to upgrade to a quad-core CPU down the line give the machine plenty of room to "grow".
First off, DUH! The article conceeds this point almost immediately.
Second, Windows hasn't gotten more expensive in any real sense - Home OS licenses of Win95->Win7 cost about $100 (retail disks), Professional OS from Win2K-> Win7 Professional/Enterprise cost about $200.
I took the bait and looked for comparable Intel parts, and found that a similar-priced Intel MB isn't hard to find - there are several $39.99-45.99 Intel MBs at Newegg.com that could be sub'ed without impacting performance greatly (including a few that support DDR3 memory), and if they would browse over to Microcenter.com for their CPU they could have gotten an Intel E5300 CPU for the same money ($59.99). Microcenter.com also has a cheaper dual-core Celeron E3300 that costs $40, which would free-up a twenty dollar bill to bump RAM from one to two Gigs. (The dual-core Celeron E3300 supports Virtualization, if that is interesting to you) Either a 2 Gig DDR3 DIMM or 2x 1 Gig DDR3 DIMM kits are available at Newegg.com for $45, just $20 more than the single 1 Gig DDR3 DIMM, and with $7.05 left over from their $200 cap, a $45 MB is still under budget.
Intel offers similar-priced component choices, so discounting Intel wasn't that obvious - it was a result of their choice of vendor for their supplier...
Understand, I'm not faulting them for using the AMD Athlon 245 CPU/MB they choose, I'm only commenting on the tone of the dismissal of Intel options...
Where I live (Central NJ) we have some very good AT&T coverage, I think because we are also home to AT&T's headquarters.
I researched coverage before I bought my iPhone 2+ years ago, and 6 mos ago upgrading was a no-brained. Do I wish the bill was lower? Sure. Do I wish the network was faster? Sure, but that doesn't mean I'm dissatisfied with what they offer.
The issue is the entire device, not the standalone code - the code is not usable outside the device, and I'm pretty sure implantable devices ARE regulated by Gov't. This is a non-issue designed, I am certain, to raise the profile of the organization making the claim in the eyes of those outside the industry.
There are many parallels, but to me the easiest is the on-board computer in a car. Certifying the software in the computer is pointless, since it is so closely tied to the hardware it runs on - so the only useful tests are for the entire software, hardware, and vehicle to be tested as a whole.
Wanna make a point about Jim DeMint getting contributions from AT&T? Harry Reid got more from AT&T ($44K for Harry, $36K for Jim - see: http://politics.usnews.com/congress/reid-harry/donors) - I hear he supports Net neutrality (http://mydd.com/2006/6/10/harry-reid-and-net-neutrality)... I don't think money determines support for a given bill, otherwise Harry owes AT&T donors a refund...
That would be interesting - a database of constantly uploaded images with long/lat coordinates, so you could see what is going on anywhere... As long as someone there is running the app. Think of it as a crowd-sourced, constantly refreshed street-view... Of course, you'd have to turn it off when the police are nearby.
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy when you broadcast information from your home in an unsecured form.
If you secure the information you can be considered to have taken reasonable steps to ensure some level of privacy, but that doesn't mean you are guaranteed privacy - you are still broadcasting the information, albeit encrypted.
If you want to keep your MAC addresses (or any other information) private, don't broadcast them.
Now, if anyone finds evidence that Google is harvesting MAC addresses and combining them with MAC addresses harvested from, say, Google searches or web advertising tacking, then you start to head towards a problem, but you don't really get there (IMHO). These are all opt-in activities, you choose to go online, you choose to broadcast your information, it's not Google's fault if you fail to realize those two choices are related, and together could result in certain other decisions being made as a direct result of those two decisions (browse and broadcast).
I had to laugh at earlier attempts to portray this as a matter of "National Security" because members of Congress had unprotected WiFi links in their houses that could be picked up by anyone driving by, be it Google's camera cars, a war-driving teenager, or a neighbor walking down the street with a WiFi-enabled smartphone. The fault, in this case, lies squarely in the hands of the congress-critters that relied on technology they didn't understand and took few, if any, precautions to safeguard their communications.
The original poster wants to lump most of the blame for this bill/law on lobbyists, but I'm not quite sure who those lobbyists s/he imagines would be? Lobbyists (typically) represent forces outside government, and it seem to me this is a case of the government wanting to know when they are on the record (a point the opriginal poster agrees with). Now, the penalties may see a bit draconian, but without knowing how the penalty is imposed, it is hard to have a real opinion.
It sounds like the issue isn't recording a conversation so much as it is the publication of that recording (personal vs. professional use).
Here in the US we have a few states with laws designed to protect private conversations, but we also have states where only one party to the conversation needs to be aware of the recording (participants are protected, third-party recorders are not).
Aside from the punishments, this seems reasonable - you can't record private conversations and make them public without alerting the other party that you are recording the conversation, with exceptions carved out for journalists. You can argue the definition of "journalist" and the punishment meted out, but the basic law is nothing new really.
I am assuming that recording a conversation for personal use is still OK, and that you can introduce such a "private" recording as evidence in a trial...
Apparently the US Department of Homeland Security is looking into this technology - but they want to combine this with the phenomenon of Internet Hunting - they view this as a more expensive alternative to the highly-effective Drone Aircraft in use in various theaters of operation...
More importantly, how does this effort help those people in Muslim countries feel about their culture's contribution to the understanding of science and medicine? According to the head of NASA, that is their 'foremost priority'!
Schools that offer their students internet access have a responsibility to filter what the students can access over that connection. That a student can come to school with a smart phone or wireless data card doesn't absolve the school of it's need to filter it's internet connection.
What your clever little argument avoids is that students aren't allowed to use their cellphones during school hours, so a clever student who is updating their facebook page on their smartphone is still in trouble, the one that falls through the cracks is the student who uses a laptop with a wireless data plan that avoids the school network (since laptops are legit and they aren't using the district's network)...
I work in IT for a public school district, and to get any federal subsidy (eRate) they must filter their internet connection. Not optional, and very, very few school districts can jstify not filtering their internet connection AND making up the 40% subsidy they would be giving up without filtering.
SSH traffic is very, very hard to filter effectively, so many districts turn it off, simply block SSH traffic for kids period. We allow it for faculty accounts, and several times a year we have to reset a faculty user's password when the kids learn it (teacher accounts aren't blocked).
Once kids figure out they can get to facebook by using the https URL, the district really doesn't have a choice...
During the last presidential election there was great angst over certain radio personalities "encouraging" registered republican voters to cross over an dvote for Hillary Clinton to inflate her numbers and maybe hand her the democratic primary victory in states with open primaries - the motive being that Ms. Clinton would be an easier opponent in a presidential race than Barack Obama.
Many on the left called this fraud, and they were wrong. Citizens can register for any political party they like, they can vote in the primaries in a manner consistent with the laws, and have any motive or reason behind their vote - none of which are a crime (or fraud, or even dishonest).
If Republicans voted for this democratic candidate in any organized manner, why did no one discover it before the election? Does anyone really believe that elecronic voting machines were tampered? (If so, why waste the effort on a primary? Why not wait for the real election and make a difference?) That upwards of 100K Republican "operatives" were able to organize and execute this "plan" without anyone knowing until AFTER the election? (Nobody keeps that big a "conspiracy" secret, someone would have blogged, facebooked, or in some other way leaked the info before the election IMHO)
The simple truth is, no one really questioned the candidates in this strong Republican district, and their lax policies blew up in their face when they put such an unworthy candidate on the ballot as a Democratic candidate.
If errors are found in the electronic voting machines, let's try and remember who pushed for them and who said they weren't ready.
It is truely fascinating to me that no one (apparently) asked any questions during the primary race, there was very little to no interest in him UNTIL he won the primary, but not just any primary, but a democratic primary at that!
A few questions:
a) Is South Carolina an "open" or "closed" primary? Meaning, can registered Republicans vote in the Democratic primary?
b) Who ran against him? Why didn't they question his candidacy at the time?
c) Why, with a "statistical probability" of about one in ten is this outcome considered so improbable? If I'm asked to pick a number between one and ten and I guess it correctly, is it really proof of a conspiracy?
d) How did he get to self-affiliate with the Democratic party? Is there no process to determine if people who claim to be Democratic candidates are truely Democratic candidates? (You know, like call the party headquarters, request documentation from the candidate, etc.?)
Just a few fun points to make:
1) This candidate can not be accused of not following through on his campaign promises - since he made none.
2) All his "baggage" (showing an inapropriate image to a female college student?) is now known.
3) If this candidate were a Republican, don't you think the Democrats would have researched the snot out of this fellow? (Why hold their own to a lesser standard?)
4) He most likely was not supported by any local "Tea Party" coalition. (Despite dillusional assertions to the contrary.)
5) Any chance the losing democratic candidates will register as Independent candidates and run in the general election, dilluting the democratic ticket by splitting the vote and all but assuring the Republican on the ticket re-election?
The focus will be on developing an OS with a simplified user interface that provides quick access to the most-used applications.
I thought that was one of the main goals of Ubuntu - if not explicitly stated, the obvious conclusion for other stated goals and objectives.
(Would anyone want to provide either a complicated interface or make it harder to access most-used applications? I bet Microsoft had the very same goals in mind when they designed/developed Win 3.1, Win95, Win2K, WinXP, Vista, and now Win 7. If Microsoft met those goals or not is up for debate, but I'm pretty sure that was their goal as well.)
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I eagerly await the day when my local police drive performance-challenged electric/hybrids... But as a taxpayer I will not allow my local police to switch over to Teslas starting at $100K/each...
$100,000/yr is more than 84% of American households earn in a year, according to none other than wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States). Your $200,000/yr couple are it the top 5% of wage earners.
You are not as average as you want to believe.
Also, your Prius came with a $2,000 tax incentive through 2003... (http://www.bankrate.com/finance/auto/are-you-ready-for-a-hybrid-vehicle.aspx)
So, to re-cap, someone earring in the top 15% of all Americans bought a car with a $2,000 tax break - this seems to fall in line with the premise of the original article...
Wow, where did the tax break on your Prius go? You were eligible for several thousand IIRC...
Also, there is a basic difference between a $26K car w/tax break vs. a $41K.
Your Prius isn't a plug-in either - that is what the article is about...
Why is the Gov't funding (not incentivizing through tax breaks, but pouring billions down the gullet of a new industry) the development of electric cars?
At $41K, a sub-compact plug-in car is insane, especially when you consider that what, 50% of all electricity runs on coal, the poster child for dirty industries AND something this administration is hoping to tax and regulate out of existence.
What happened to GM's hydrogen car? It should have been coming to market in the next 12 months and Shell had committed to installing hydrogen "stills" at every Shell station to support the car...
It's a shame our "Car Czar" has no experience building ANYTHIG, let alone automobiles...
What are you on? Grades are the result of individual effort, not class-averaged calculations! I have attended schools where the grades were done on a curve, but that was because there was so much "headroom" in the tests to allow exceptional students to shine that (I kid you not), a grade of 15 out of 100 would typically be a "C" grade.
Those appelations people ascribe to letter grades are not binding, because it says "average" doesn't mean half the class did better than you and half the class did worse - it is an indication of the effort of the individual.
I'd be interested to see what 50% more money would do for performance - I'm thinking a low-end i3 system would be possible, given a cheap enough case... A suitable Intel MB can be had for $100, third-party MBs go for as little as $80. The i3-530 CPU can be had for another $100, figure $55 for 2 Gigs of DDR3 RAM and that leaves $45 for case/PS.
Drop the requirement for a case/PS (say you're upgrading an older desktop), you can go to 4 Gig of RAM and still be under $300.
The system I'm imagining would be an Intel i3-530, Intel DH55TC w/ whatever 4 Gig DDR3 is on sale for $100 or less...
The Intel DH55TC appears to run fine under the latest Ubuntu - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Intel_DH55TC
Atom MBs are nice, but they are built fo rcertain performance/cost/environmental constraints - they are a compromise system for a desktop system.
You pay a premium for the Mini-ITX form-factor.
You pay a premium for it's low-power envelope.
You pay a premium for the fanless operation.
An Atom CPU core is not performance equal to a Core2Duo or similar AMD offering.
At $89 (list) a top-of-the-line D510MO is a very nice tool to address certain problems, but that extra $20 can buy a much more capable MB & CPU/Heatsink combo, either the AMD solution they propose (or anything similar) or an Intel E5300 and $40-45 MB.
You could save $20 or so, and probably upgrade the RAM to 2 Gigs of DDR2 RAM, the performance would be compromised pretty severely, A mATX MB offers the chance to add (typically) a 16x PCIe graphics card, and a PCI or 1x PCIe (or both) add-in card. Also, the ability to upgrade to a quad-core CPU down the line give the machine plenty of room to "grow".
That's $20 for a second GIG of RAM - no sweat, just showing your age... ;^)
First off, DUH! The article conceeds this point almost immediately.
Second, Windows hasn't gotten more expensive in any real sense - Home OS licenses of Win95->Win7 cost about $100 (retail disks), Professional OS from Win2K-> Win7 Professional/Enterprise cost about $200.
Hardware, as you note, has gotten cheaper.
I took the bait and looked for comparable Intel parts, and found that a similar-priced Intel MB isn't hard to find - there are several $39.99-45.99 Intel MBs at Newegg.com that could be sub'ed without impacting performance greatly (including a few that support DDR3 memory), and if they would browse over to Microcenter.com for their CPU they could have gotten an Intel E5300 CPU for the same money ($59.99). Microcenter.com also has a cheaper dual-core Celeron E3300 that costs $40, which would free-up a twenty dollar bill to bump RAM from one to two Gigs. (The dual-core Celeron E3300 supports Virtualization, if that is interesting to you) Either a 2 Gig DDR3 DIMM or 2x 1 Gig DDR3 DIMM kits are available at Newegg.com for $45, just $20 more than the single 1 Gig DDR3 DIMM, and with $7.05 left over from their $200 cap, a $45 MB is still under budget.
Intel offers similar-priced component choices, so discounting Intel wasn't that obvious - it was a result of their choice of vendor for their supplier...
Understand, I'm not faulting them for using the AMD Athlon 245 CPU/MB they choose, I'm only commenting on the tone of the dismissal of Intel options...
Where I live (Central NJ) we have some very good AT&T coverage, I think because we are also home to AT&T's headquarters.
I researched coverage before I bought my iPhone 2+ years ago, and 6 mos ago upgrading was a no-brained. Do I wish the bill was lower? Sure. Do I wish the network was faster? Sure, but that doesn't mean I'm dissatisfied with what they offer.
The issue is the entire device, not the standalone code - the code is not usable outside the device, and I'm pretty sure implantable devices ARE regulated by Gov't. This is a non-issue designed, I am certain, to raise the profile of the organization making the claim in the eyes of those outside the industry.
There are many parallels, but to me the easiest is the on-board computer in a car. Certifying the software in the computer is pointless, since it is so closely tied to the hardware it runs on - so the only useful tests are for the entire software, hardware, and vehicle to be tested as a whole.
Wanna make a point about Jim DeMint getting contributions from AT&T? Harry Reid got more from AT&T ($44K for Harry, $36K for Jim - see: http://politics.usnews.com/congress/reid-harry/donors) - I hear he supports Net neutrality (http://mydd.com/2006/6/10/harry-reid-and-net-neutrality)... I don't think money determines support for a given bill, otherwise Harry owes AT&T donors a refund...
That would be interesting - a database of constantly uploaded images with long/lat coordinates, so you could see what is going on anywhere... As long as someone there is running the app. Think of it as a crowd-sourced, constantly refreshed street-view... Of course, you'd have to turn it off when the police are nearby.
There is no reasonable expectation of privacy when you broadcast information from your home in an unsecured form.
If you secure the information you can be considered to have taken reasonable steps to ensure some level of privacy, but that doesn't mean you are guaranteed privacy - you are still broadcasting the information, albeit encrypted.
If you want to keep your MAC addresses (or any other information) private, don't broadcast them.
Now, if anyone finds evidence that Google is harvesting MAC addresses and combining them with MAC addresses harvested from, say, Google searches or web advertising tacking, then you start to head towards a problem, but you don't really get there (IMHO). These are all opt-in activities, you choose to go online, you choose to broadcast your information, it's not Google's fault if you fail to realize those two choices are related, and together could result in certain other decisions being made as a direct result of those two decisions (browse and broadcast).
I had to laugh at earlier attempts to portray this as a matter of "National Security" because members of Congress had unprotected WiFi links in their houses that could be picked up by anyone driving by, be it Google's camera cars, a war-driving teenager, or a neighbor walking down the street with a WiFi-enabled smartphone. The fault, in this case, lies squarely in the hands of the congress-critters that relied on technology they didn't understand and took few, if any, precautions to safeguard their communications.
The original poster wants to lump most of the blame for this bill/law on lobbyists, but I'm not quite sure who those lobbyists s/he imagines would be? Lobbyists (typically) represent forces outside government, and it seem to me this is a case of the government wanting to know when they are on the record (a point the opriginal poster agrees with). Now, the penalties may see a bit draconian, but without knowing how the penalty is imposed, it is hard to have a real opinion.
It sounds like the issue isn't recording a conversation so much as it is the publication of that recording (personal vs. professional use).
Here in the US we have a few states with laws designed to protect private conversations, but we also have states where only one party to the conversation needs to be aware of the recording (participants are protected, third-party recorders are not).
Aside from the punishments, this seems reasonable - you can't record private conversations and make them public without alerting the other party that you are recording the conversation, with exceptions carved out for journalists. You can argue the definition of "journalist" and the punishment meted out, but the basic law is nothing new really.
I am assuming that recording a conversation for personal use is still OK, and that you can introduce such a "private" recording as evidence in a trial...
Apparently the US Department of Homeland Security is looking into this technology - but they want to combine this with the phenomenon of Internet Hunting - they view this as a more expensive alternative to the highly-effective Drone Aircraft in use in various theaters of operation...
More importantly, how does this effort help those people in Muslim countries feel about their culture's contribution to the understanding of science and medicine? According to the head of NASA, that is their 'foremost priority'!
Schools that offer their students internet access have a responsibility to filter what the students can access over that connection. That a student can come to school with a smart phone or wireless data card doesn't absolve the school of it's need to filter it's internet connection.
What your clever little argument avoids is that students aren't allowed to use their cellphones during school hours, so a clever student who is updating their facebook page on their smartphone is still in trouble, the one that falls through the cracks is the student who uses a laptop with a wireless data plan that avoids the school network (since laptops are legit and they aren't using the district's network)...
I work in IT for a public school district, and to get any federal subsidy (eRate) they must filter their internet connection. Not optional, and very, very few school districts can jstify not filtering their internet connection AND making up the 40% subsidy they would be giving up without filtering.
SSH traffic is very, very hard to filter effectively, so many districts turn it off, simply block SSH traffic for kids period. We allow it for faculty accounts, and several times a year we have to reset a faculty user's password when the kids learn it (teacher accounts aren't blocked).
Once kids figure out they can get to facebook by using the https URL, the district really doesn't have a choice...
You need to look into websites, there is no magazine that captures the zeitgeist of the personal computer industry today:
http://www.arstechnica.com/
http://www.lifehacker.com/
http://www.tomshardware.com/
then there are specialty sites that focus on very particular topics, but those are some good, general sites to start with...
To get your John C. Dvorak fill, you could go here:
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/
And Jerry Pournelle is here:
http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/
Hope that helps
During the last presidential election there was great angst over certain radio personalities "encouraging" registered republican voters to cross over an dvote for Hillary Clinton to inflate her numbers and maybe hand her the democratic primary victory in states with open primaries - the motive being that Ms. Clinton would be an easier opponent in a presidential race than Barack Obama.
Many on the left called this fraud, and they were wrong. Citizens can register for any political party they like, they can vote in the primaries in a manner consistent with the laws, and have any motive or reason behind their vote - none of which are a crime (or fraud, or even dishonest).
If Republicans voted for this democratic candidate in any organized manner, why did no one discover it before the election? Does anyone really believe that elecronic voting machines were tampered? (If so, why waste the effort on a primary? Why not wait for the real election and make a difference?) That upwards of 100K Republican "operatives" were able to organize and execute this "plan" without anyone knowing until AFTER the election? (Nobody keeps that big a "conspiracy" secret, someone would have blogged, facebooked, or in some other way leaked the info before the election IMHO)
The simple truth is, no one really questioned the candidates in this strong Republican district, and their lax policies blew up in their face when they put such an unworthy candidate on the ballot as a Democratic candidate.
If errors are found in the electronic voting machines, let's try and remember who pushed for them and who said they weren't ready.
It is truely fascinating to me that no one (apparently) asked any questions during the primary race, there was very little to no interest in him UNTIL he won the primary, but not just any primary, but a democratic primary at that!
A few questions:
a) Is South Carolina an "open" or "closed" primary? Meaning, can registered Republicans vote in the Democratic primary?
b) Who ran against him? Why didn't they question his candidacy at the time?
c) Why, with a "statistical probability" of about one in ten is this outcome considered so improbable? If I'm asked to pick a number between one and ten and I guess it correctly, is it really proof of a conspiracy?
d) How did he get to self-affiliate with the Democratic party? Is there no process to determine if people who claim to be Democratic candidates are truely Democratic candidates? (You know, like call the party headquarters, request documentation from the candidate, etc.?)
Just a few fun points to make:
1) This candidate can not be accused of not following through on his campaign promises - since he made none.
2) All his "baggage" (showing an inapropriate image to a female college student?) is now known.
3) If this candidate were a Republican, don't you think the Democrats would have researched the snot out of this fellow? (Why hold their own to a lesser standard?)
4) He most likely was not supported by any local "Tea Party" coalition. (Despite dillusional assertions to the contrary.)
5) Any chance the losing democratic candidates will register as Independent candidates and run in the general election, dilluting the democratic ticket by splitting the vote and all but assuring the Republican on the ticket re-election?
I thought that was one of the main goals of Ubuntu - if not explicitly stated, the obvious conclusion for other stated goals and objectives.
(Would anyone want to provide either a complicated interface or make it harder to access most-used applications? I bet Microsoft had the very same goals in mind when they designed/developed Win 3.1, Win95, Win2K, WinXP, Vista, and now Win 7. If Microsoft met those goals or not is up for debate, but I'm pretty sure that was their goal as well.)
Redundant? Many, many posts citing correct Win XP release date...