If you are too stupid to change the default password on the SSH server running on your iPhone, you shouldn't have a jailbroken iPhone. You should leave the damn software alone so that Big Daddy Jobs can take care of security for you. Come back and see us jailbreakers when you get to wear your big boy panties.

I switched from WinMob 6.1 to an iPhone too. I'll never go back. I will never buy another phone that has to be operated with a toothpick.

I read books very often with Stanza. It's great. I just bought a book for it this weekend. "A History of the American People". For reading my Game FAQs and walkthroughs, I use GoodReader. It formats nicely so that a standard ASCII document can be read in landscape view without word wrapping which screws up the ASCII tables and makes them hard to use.

The Droid looks to be a very nice phone too. I watched demos of it on the internet. It looks very iPhone like which is a good thing. I could see myself buying one of those in the future if android turns out to be as slick as the iPhone OS. I would like to be able to develop apps for my phone without special permission from Apple and without buying a damned Mac computer.

So SPARC now lays claim to http://www.*sparc*.* as well as http://www.*spark*.*

Does this mean I can't register www.sparccankissmyass.com without getting a C&D letter?

I find it both entertaining and comical when the alligators start eating each other. This reminds me of when RIM got sued over push email technology and lost. Now somebody get the popcorn going and I'll fetch the lawn chairs. This will be good!

I hope Obama doesn't hear about this taxing system in Spain! He'll rehire the communist conspiracy theorist Van Jones as the new music czar. We'll all be paying into the government run "See Us Collect and Keep Everyone's Riches" program or S.U.C.K.E.R. program for short.

Through the newly minted SUCKER program, you will be able to download any and all music for free. Sure, the wealthiest among us... i.e. those who are fortunate enough to be able to pay for blank media or media players will have to pay a paltry 150% tax, but it's a small price to pay for freedom. The beauty of the SUCKER program is that 90% of downloaders won't have to pay the tax.

Grandmas, grandpas, moms, and dads buying blanks to back up the family photos or iPods for junior will foot the bill. They are the wealthiest Americans and by God they SHOULD pay! The SUCKER program will be a small pittance for all those years they have been living off the backs of the music pirates. The administration will point to similar successful programs in Canada and Spain to garner support for the SUCKER program.

I can just see it now.

Reminds me of the famous Patton quote that goes something like: "The object of war is not to die for your country. It's to make the other son of a bitch die for his."

I know what my first gesture for my windows installation will be...

I'm not sure if the engine referenced is responsible for rendering graphics. I am a HUGE Bethesda fanboy... I'll admit it. I LOVE Oblivion and all of it's DLC as well as Morrowind and Fallout 3. However, those plastic looking expressionless faces are sub par for such fantastic games. I realize that this is a difficult thing to accomplish with current technology and that most games suffer from this to some extent. The other thing that bugs me about the engine is that the women are very manly looking. If I were Bethesda, my big focus for my next engine iteration would be on having the character models show at least a little bit of emotion and make the women look like women.

The game mechanics portions of their engines are wonderful and their talent at creating atmosphere in a game is spot on. That has got to be quite an achievement in games where people play for sixty to over a hundred hours. Their games never feel terribly repetitive to me. I stay engaged pretty much the whole time.

I see the point you are trying to make, but the home computer market existed long before Microsoft. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. There was the Atari 1200XL that was pretty popular too. The schools had TRS-80s. My first "real computer" with a tape drive and everything was a Commodore 64. I miss that machine. [SIGH]... what was I saying? Oh yeah. I never heard of Microsoft or Windows until I was in college and one of my classmates asked me if I had seen that new "Windows" thing that was out. I saw it in one of the labs and wondered what the hell you would ever need that mouse and all that junk for when you had a perfectly good keyboard and command prompt. All the first IBM home computer did, in my opinion, was kill the TRS and the Amiga.

What I am trying to say is that Microsoft did the same thing to the home computer market that they did to the browser market when Netscape was king. They saw a burgeoning market and destroyed it by reshaping it into a tool that would make them masters of the universe. You can have a computer in any flavor you want as long as it runs windows.

For all you Apple fans, I know the IIe was humming along beautifully in the same era before MS destroyed the wonderfully varied marketplace, but I couldn't afford one and never got into them.

I'm not convinced that Bill's dominance in business is a phenomenon to be treasured in the annals of computer history. I'm not usually an MS hater, but I think they have done as much harm as they have good.

Oh yeah... I almost forgot... "Get off my lawn!"

Acid06, I would like to say that I have worked with programmers in Pocos de Caldas and you guys have some top notch people in the business. They work for a third of what we earn here. I've always thought that was unfair because they are as good as my people here... of course my people are now drawing unemployment and having zero luck finding jobs at the moment. I don't want you to think that my comments on this subject are a reflection of Brazilians because the ones I know are very professional and skilled.

I understand your point. I also acknowledge that California's utter financial failure is not solely due to environmental policy. The discussion here revolves around carbon credits so I was limiting my commentary to energy policy. There are many factors in California's crisis. Energy policy, outrageous taxes and cost of living are big drivers, though.

I am not a fool chasing windmills disguised as environmentalists. The deregulated power industry put me in the spot I am in. These carbon credits won't fix it. If power goes up any more than it already has, there is no hope whatsoever of my plant restarting. They will add another production line in some other country and I will move, exit this business, or find another line of work. There are other facilities in my company here in the USA that are still struggling along right now. Carbon credits will add to their cost and they will be shut down just like we were. That's a simple fact. If the current administration pushes this issue as hard as they say they will, all heavy manufacturing that deals with pollutants will simply exit the U.S.

We can control pollution to a certain extent by demanding more from the industries causing the problem. However, the point of diminishing returns is reached rapidly and it will cause a mass exodus of certain types of business. Business that employs lots of people with good paying jobs that buy lots of computers, cars, groceries, houses, and so on. These carbon credits will hurt many businesses and ruin others. That will lead to further job loss and a worsening of the economy. I'm a "computer guy" not an economist, but that much I do know.

I see your point and I know too well that companies will cry wolf every time the government holds their feet to the fire. However, in this case, they aren't crying wolf. Energy drives our economy and increasing it's cost will most certainly hurt our economy.

My company doesn't make bluejeans. I re-read my post and I'm fairly certain I didn't mention Levi's 501 anywhere. My production lines consumed 450 megawatts of power before they shut us down. I'm not sure what you would consider a significant cost driver for a business, but that was a pretty significant driver in mine. I spent a lot of time tweaking software to make sure that power was used perfectly every day to make the maximum amount of product possible with as little waste as possible. I don't do that right now since we can't afford to run with the economy in the toilet and power through the roof.

Before our power costs got out of control, China was BUYING everything we could make.

Thanks for participating, though. That was big of you.

Ummm... my company has several plants in Brazil. I know exactly what I am talking about. I know how much it costs to make our product there versus how much it costs here in the USA. I see reports on it every quarter. The environmental laws in Brazil were implemented in the 90's and updated in 2004. Before that, it was nearly a free for all. The plants were built before the current regs. Brazil won't be getting any more of these plants now that the new laws are in place. They will go elsewhere.

The hydro power was great until 2001 when there was a drought and the government had to ration power in Brazil. That's great for business. Now they are trying to build gas fired power plants to diversify. All nineteen of those new plants burn good old fossil fuel. That's very green.

Yep, you're right. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Hell, I've got software running in two plants in Brazil right now.