> Kinda like Wyoming, or North Dakota, or even British Columbia?

Or Alabama. Or Mississippi. Or South Carolina. The main roads are pretty good and are well marked, but as soon as you get on a secondary road, it's VERY easy to get lost.

Erm, that should be 7.5 SECOND maps. Finishing my coffee now ... :)

> Each GPS unit I ever used, tried funny stuff with me at on time or another.

This. It depends on the area. One rule of thumb is, if there's a lot of detail in Google Earth or Google Maps (online), your GPS may be better. Can't speak to Apple's maps, because I don't use Apple. I'm all-Google, including the Android phone.

But here in Alabama, the GPS maps (and even the official government 7.5 minute maps, for that matter) can be hilariously incorrect. I've had to turn off that stupid voice on my GPS because it drives me crazy with the constant, "recalculating."

A few years ago, I had to do a partial proof on an AM array, which required driving all of the place, taking field strength measurements. Even though it's a Birmingham (ie, metro-area) station, there were parts of Jefferson county that were Dueling Banjos territory. The GPS was just flat wrong in several instances.

Fortunately, I marked all of the locations in my GPS so that when I had to do a recert recently, I could find the original measurement points very easily.

> wait until one of your programs makes a procedure call to one of the now non-existent UI hooks

Someone mod up the AC. Spot on the money.

> And frankly Win 7 runs great even on low power devices

Can't argue with that. But I still think it's crappy. I'm even fair enough to say that not all of it is Microsoft's fault, and that some of it is simply being a victim of their own success. (The old, "the reason why malware people target Windows is because it's the most common" thingie.)

But case in point: my wife's HP netbook came with Win7 installed. She managed to browse the Web for maybe two weeks before catching a virus. She wasn't visiting dodgy or off-the-highway sites, either. She got hacked because one of her favorite "name brand" sites had been hacked.

We had two choices: install some sort of virus/malware protection, which typically cuts performance in half, or kill the OS. She begged me to install OpenSuse Linux on it (that's what I use) and she has been happy ever since.

At work, I can use a content/malware filter on all of our Windows machines. On an individual PC, though, unless (as I said) you want to really, really kill performance, or stay off the Internet, it's a pain in the butt. Where Microsoft DOES get some blame for this is in the design decisions they made years ago, and which are perpetuated today, to go for "ease of use" rather than truly locking down the system.

Just my opinion, and worth exactly what you paid for it. :)

> Liberal universities can kick you out for spewing Christian fundamentalist nonsense,

But the liberal universities in question are usually state- or federally-funded. The Christian universities that you seem to have in mind are typically privately-owned and operated.

Just pointing that out. Your idea of eliminating government involvement is a great one, but it'll never happen.

> A majority think it's doing a good job.

The vast majority of Americans never fly. All they know is that there haven't been any more airplanes crashing into buildings. Ergo, they conclude that the TSA must be working.

If they did fly regularly, and ever watched some little kid screaming because the TSA agent was groping and touching them "where mom and dad told me never to let anyone touch me," they'd change their opinions in an instant.

Sad, but true.

> 100% false (unless you are talking about a very, very small "city".

And don't forget antenna location. As a general rule, higher is better. If you're trying to jam an entire city from a car in the street, you'd have to radiate so much power that your alternator would whine and your brain would become ... warm. :)

Be better from the top of tall building, but now you can easily be located and dealt with. Unless you're spiderman and can leap from one building to the next, that is. Or, you don't think anyone would notice you hauling a bunch of weird-looking stuff onto the roof of a building.

This article is another one of the silly "what ifs" under the general heading of, "hey, let's scare ourselves to death about something new!" (It's not even new; jamming has been around almost as long as radio has.)

Radiated power follows an inverse square law (it drops off by the square of the distance), and higher frequencies like those used in wireless phones and routers can be blocked by walls, trees, you name it. You're gonna need a lot of power and you'll need to be well above the average terrain for this to work. Not saying it can't be done, but there are easier ways to be a butthead if you're that determined.

> I don't understand it either. The Republicans have the hick and religious nutter vote locked up, why court them at all?

Actually, there's some fascinating analysis going on right now that shows that about 3 million registered Republicans didn't bother to vote. I'm still waiting on some hard numbers, but it *looks* like (as I write this) that a number of the "hick and nutter" voters, as you call them, thought Romney was too moderate to bother with. Ergo, they didn't vote at all.

This line of analysis notes that Romney experienced a nice surge in the polls after the first debate, but by the third, when he was playing a prevent defense and agreeing with Obama as much as disagreeing, he went flat again.

For what that's worth. Just an observation.

> I'm not sure what it is about the US that makes it impossible to have more than 2 parties, but first past the post isn't it.

The media, for one. Remember, we have a free market, ratings-driven media system. Unless a candidate has more than a few percentage in the polls, he/she will rarely be mentioned in the news. The viewers/listeners/readers aren't interested, so the media isn't interested, which lowers interest even further. It's a positive-feedback loop. Net result: most Americans don't even know who Buddy Roemer and Gary Johnson are.

The government itself, for another. I learned this as a lad. My father was Chairman of the Board of Elections in our little county, and was a good Democrat from a long line of Democrats. The rules state that the local board must have a majority of the same party as the Governor, so when the first Republican governor in decades was elected, the board became Republican and my father lost his position. Not a big deal, and I'm not whining (neither did my father), but that type of thing indicates why a two-party system is sort of hard-coded into things here in the States.

But to illustrate the point: after that Republican governor won, there were magically and suddenly lots and lots of folks who changed their registration from Dem to Repub. In fact, the secretary at the Board of Elections office was one of them! :)

It's not "de jure," it's "de facto." One thing that Dems and Repubs can agree on -- vehemently -- is that they will do nothing whatsoever to permit new political parties to prosper.

> The reality is that historically the economy and the rich have done very well during periods of high taxes.

The rich can weather any storm (short of angry villagers storming the castle with pitchforks and torches, but don't stop me when I'm on a roll). :)

The real issue is the middle class -- or even the lower middle class -- and the desire to make something more of one's self. This may seem off topic, but it isn't: the fact is, for the US Government to have the revenue that it wants, taxing the top 2% at a 100%, confiscatory rate still won't do it. That means that, at the end of the day, they will either (a) continue to borrow, or (b), come after me.

(The real answer is (c), both of the above. I'm not even being a prophet; I'm stating a fact. They have no choice.)

To empower and grow the middle class, you need opportunity. Take the barriers out of the way, they'll create small businesses and they'll hire others. As those businesses grow, they will need capital. It's just that simple.

But we don't have all the resources we'd need to fulfill that dream. We import a considerable percentage of what we need in our daily lives.

> I'm guessing that we're in better shape to do without them than they are to do without us. Fuck 'em.

What terrifies me is that you actually believe that. You're not alone, either.

> Simply, there will be no money.

Getting people to believe that is the trick. It's not Republicans vs. Democrats, either. Both parties have spent more than incoming revenue (albeit on different things at times, and in different amounts).

Case in point: I work in Jefferson County, Alabama. It's bankrupt. (Literally. As in the largest municipal bankruptcy. Ever.) In spite of that, a few months back, the County Commission notes that there are condemned homes from the tornadoes of April 27, 2011. They declare it an emergency and SPEND MONEY THAT THEY DON'T HAVE on the "problem."

There is a fundamental disconnect here. No one wants to believe that the great, the powerful OZ^H^H United States could run out of money, but it could. And as someone else pointed out above, the WORST case would be for the government to just start printing money to cover the shortfall. That will be completely and utterly disastrous.

Trying to explain that to the average guy on the street is the trick. He or she just doesn't -- and WILL not -- get it.

Shoot, the average Guy On The Street has no idea what a sweetheart deal we have a present by having the world's reserve currency. If that should change to the Yen or some other currency, prices are going to skyrocket as well.

> I'm sorry, but this was all just smoke and mirrors. Romney never had the kind of support he'd need to win.

So in other words, you're not going to give the Obama campaign any credit for that last month, when they frantically did a superb job after his fairly-dismal showing in the first debate? They didn't need to do any of that door-knocking, or campaignin' in Ohio and Pennsylvania, is that it? Heh.

Good on ya, mate.