Your country is not the one putting this forth. The current set of "leaders" is. Vote them out next Tuesday.

You'll have no need for such obscure knowledge in the USSO, Comrade.

Root it - you paid for it, why not own it, too? Then you can do your own upgrades...

CM7, 9

Really? You honestly think that? No wonder that the Feds can get away with the stuff they do, with people believing such...

The facts in the matter ARE known - by the insiders, who it seems to me are doing their level best to keep said facts *unknown* to the public, for political reasons, likely. The "ongoing investigation" which matters is the one that is rooting out just which of them knew what, and when, and why that knowledge was not used to avoid the death of an American Ambassador (for the first time in over 30 years) and 3 other Americans.

As far as exploiting it for political gain, your guy isn't any better than Romney - wanna guess who's over in Libya right now? None other than John Brennan, Obama’s current counterterrorism adviser - the same guy who made up the drone assassination lists. What do you think the odds are that he oh-so conveniently fingers some fringe Islamist group or another, and we see some sort of remote attack "on the perpetrators of the Benghazi Embassy assault" a week or so before voting day...

RedHat - SuSe - Libranet - 'Drake - Turbolinux - Corel - Xandros (Beta Tester then user) - Mepis - Knoppix - DSL - Arch - Ubuntu - Mint.

Those were the primaries, as I recall - distros which stayed on the disk long enough to remember having used them for work/play. Libranet always stands out as the first distro I ran across with a graphical install (ncurses). It was amazing and fun to be able to see results so quickly. :) Was a Beta tester for Xandros from the beginning, dropped it when they started getting *very* commercial and climbed into bed with MS. Beta'ed for Mepis, too - Warren did a good job. Besides these, being a "distro 'ho", I've tried out any number of other solutions, a few from the top of my head:

LOAF, Peanut, Yellow Dog, PCLinuxOS, Puppy, Bodhi, etc etc...

Students and business people and IT workers, etc, but not the 'general public'. For "them", it seems to me that we are simply getting back to the then-failed "internet devices" of ~2000 or so, which is all that *most* people really need; an internet-connected device as simple as a toaster, perfect for clueless/non-techie end users. Push a button and it works, no real worries about keeping up the security and updates and all that stuff like that which people with "real computers" have and will have to continue doing. Security for these 'toasters' can be pushed out by the OEM, as needed, and due to fragmentation and customization of the various embedded OS'es by the OEM's, that may be a good thing, creating several smaller targets for black hats instead of the one monolithic MS OS that is around for years to poke at until they find a break in it that puts 90+% of the market into vulnerability phase. Phones, tablets, WebTV (then and now), Audrey, Netpliance iOpener - same paradigm, slightly different form factors. What was old, is new again...

Har. Nice try - but check out who wrote that, it's no surprise they're spouting the praise of and defense for Obama.

Author - Michael Linden of the "Center for American Progress Action Fund". Who are they? Wikipedia says:

Wow - could they even fit any more Democrats in there? It'd be tough...

No surprise it is funded by none other than George Souros. If you'll take the time to check out the origins and organizational makeup of that "non-partisan" (Hah!) CAP, you'll see that it is a literal Who's Who of Democratic Party faithful power brokers.

"Blaming Bush" is just Obama's lame excuse, that's obvious to see. IIRC, during his campaign he vowed to clean the mess up, and rather quickly. "Epic fail", I believe that is called.

Thanks to our recent Government for the fact that numbers previously almost incomprehensible are now simply part of our daily cultural consciousness...

From the May 19, 2012 - (CBS News) (emphasis mine):

Of course, Obama blames it on Bush {roll_eyes}, but that's a little disingenuous, given that at his rate until now he will have eclipsed the Bush spending by well over a factor of 2.5 by the time he leaves office if, Deity forbid, he gets reelected.

Not much Hope, and less Change, is what I've seen out of him and his administration/cabinet during his term in Office. Not that I expected it - politicians of the two parties just tell a different set of lies to get elected.

Let's get the current incompetent boob out of Office and try a new one to see if it can do any better. Maybe things will work better with someone in charge who understands making money, not just taking money...

Here's a .kmz of the crater, take a look around: http://minus.com/lbuIRyUOrBNfXR

Not much else in the area with similar depressed topology. Seems if it is/was a sinkhole, there would be more like it there or nearby to be seen.

Dusty, I think it is neat that you are gathering this sort of evidence. Kudos! :)

Poke an animal or a person, with a sharp stick, and see what kind of reaction you get - it won't be a smile and a "Let me do whatever it takes to help you...". Instead it will be similar to what this guy saw, by metaphorically poking the bureaucrats that are the TSA and airline security crowd with an offensive-to-them shirt.

As a doctoral candidate, he should be intelligent enough to hypothesize this sort of reaction, yet when that is exactly what happens, he gets all huffy. No sympathy from me, for being a dumbass and now getting whiny about it. Man up, Arijit, stop being a whiny puss.

Should the TSA and airline security be what it is now? IMO, hell no, it is doing no good, it is pointless, security theater. But that doesn't change that this person got pretty much what anyone with a lick of common sense would have guessed would be the sort of reaction one could expect. Newtons Law, and all that...

Re: wasteful - FTFA: "The savings from divesting from the aforementioned facilities is projected at $20 million."

Wow! That's a bunch of money!

But wait, whats that other thing where a bunch of money was wasted? Ahh, Solyndra... how much?

FTFWikipedia: - "Solyndra's loan approval process began under the Bush administration. However, emails show that two weeks before Obama took office, the Energy Department panel considering the loan unanimously decided not to proceed. In March 2009, one White House budget analyst wrote an email stating that "This deal is NOT ready for prime time." However, Solyndra was the first company approved for a loan guarantee under the Obama administration. On March 20, 2009 the United States Department of Energy made a "conditional commitment" to a $535 million loan guarantee to support Solyndra's construction of a commercial-scale manufacturing plant for its proprietary solar photovoltaic panels. The White House scheduled a press event for September 4 and federal reviewers gave final approval on September 2. After securing the loan guarantee, the Federal Financing Bank, a part of the Department of the Treasury, loaned Solyndra $527 million.

Solyndra also received a $25.1 million tax break from California's Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority."

Based on the chart FTFA, Solyndra cost us more than the *entire* projected astronomy budget *for 2022*, by _20%+_.

Karma be damned - let's put someone in charge who understands how and where to spend my money. Please. Give us more science and scientists, and less government. Obviously, the ones in charge right now have failed miserably at that. Boot 'em.

AMEN!!! I work with Windows (and to a proportionate degree, Mac) end users daily, and can safely say that the lack of understanding/knowledge/willingness to learn is the same, would be the same, regardless of OS. Silly things like networked printers and wireless...? That combo alone probably puts $200+ in my pocket every month per client, because when there is a burp in the network, or someones print queue gets jammed, or the on-printer shared folder for scans/faxes doesn't get reconnected at boot, etc etc... the first thing they do is call me.

That the tagline from The IT Crowd of "Have you tried turning it off and then on again..." is so funny to us all is indicative of how widespread this ignorance and lack of concern about it is. If I could get the clients on Linux, at least then they would save the money of me having to sweep and repair machines on a regular basis because of the inability of the end users to steer clear of every free clicky flashy thing online that promises "Free! FREE!!!" and winds up infecting their system with "Anti-Virus Total Solution WIndows 7 AND 8 - With Registry Cleaner!!!.

I picked up one of the TouchPad 16gb models a couple months ago. Rooted it and installed CyanogenMod the same day, but still have the webOS partition there and bootable because it allows use of the camera and a few other things like that which CM9 does not yet have working. Maybe in the near future... but until then, webOS will stay onboard. No pun intended.

In addition, the claim is made by the inventor that the US Navy has no defense plan in place WRT small boat swarms, so his is the only solution. Wrong.

I can attest that is a blatant falsehood, and that our Navy does indeed train for exactly that sort of warfare. I don't think it is revealing any sensitive info to point out the fact that a certain well known, very-fast-boat manufacturer has an ongoing contract with the Navy conducting offshore exercises using 40-50' "attack" boats powered by twin or triple 250-300hp outboard engines. I've hung out many times with the guys running those boats, and they do not operate in any sort of "blacked out" manner. They use public and privately-owned marine facilities, and conduct operations in broad daylight within areas used by recreational offshore fisherman, so I am sure that the inventor is aware of them as well. These boats can easily run in excess of 70mph, and while they may be very high-dollar craft in the consumer market, they cost less than $500K apiece.

The one advantage his invention has over these conventional hulled boats (other than raw speed) is that this is a wave piercing design, which as stated ITFA is better for the health of those aboard. That said, I seriously doubt it has anywhere near the maneuverability of more conventional offshore craft such as those I mention above. The turning radius would have to be *extremely* large with that cat hull configuration, and even moreso at super cavitation speeds. And how large a sea state can it run in? Keeping that pod above water and waves at 200mph (or even 1/4 that speed) would be absolutely critical. Water being non-compressible, one good impact would likely render that platform unusable. So - it's very fast, but can't turn/maneuver for shit, and will primarily be useful only in areas where seas will remain relatively calm.

The inventor speaks glowingly about his $20-million-dollar-per solution becoming a multi-billion dollar industry. To me, knowing what I know about water craft, it seems to me as if he is selling the US Navy a marine version of TSA body scanners. Another Federal boondoggle...

My experience is far different from yours. I work in and on computers 12-16 hours a day. I've got 3 Acers, from a Atom netbook to an i3 TimelineX, and they have done *extremely* well, and are in use constantly. I live on a boat, w/the resultant high humidity and salt content in the air, but no probs. I've recommended them to many clients, never a complaint from those who've purchased.

The OEM's I think of as "crap" are Asus & HP, and Toshiba is King of Bloatware.