You should use the whole quote too:

It's particularly unpalatable for Republicans, as the majority of them oppose to raising the minimum wage at all. "I think it's outlived its usefulness," said Rep. Joe Barton of Texas. "It may have been of some value back in the Great Depression. I would vote to repeal the minimum wage."

I'd vote to get rid of it it too, but I'm not running a campaign to repeal it. Joe Barton isn't campaigning to repeal it either. You are claiming republicans campaign to get rid of it. Big difference. There is no campaign by republicans to get rid of it.

Exaggerate much? Republicans don't wan to get rid of the minimum wage. Why would anybody campaign to get rid of the minimum wage? It would be stupid to just out and hand the democrats a loaded guy and say "Shoot me in the face!" trying to get rid of the minimum wage.

This republican knows of nobody trying to get rid of the minimum wage and I dare say you don't either.

BUT, that's not to say the democrats are not manufacturing such outrageous claims about republicans (i.e. lying about republicans intent) and turn the opposition of RAISING the minimum wage into something it's not.

Not arguing that. But the last 6 have been pretty bad and the only experience most of the readers of Shashdot generally have.

Are we in a race to the bottom or the top?

If manufacturing's biggest variable cost is labor, companies will flock to the place where their variable costs are the lowest.

So, the question is, have we started to reach wage parity now by virtue of wage reductions in the USA (race to the bottom) or the fact that wages in places like China have reached parity?

IMHO, it's both. The standard of living here in the USA has stagnated just like the last 6 years of the economy and the demands of labor outside the USA has driven costs up. But we are severely limited in this country because we face a huge increase in energy costs once the economy starts to actually do more than tread water. Manufacturing won't return, not yet.

A machine without flaws? No, that just means it wasn't tested well enough.

I don't know, some of the "unsupported" hardware does happen to work just fine on Linux. Not often, but sometimes.

Which seems like a good idea to me, except for the following list of requirements..

Will it run window's apps? You are doing to have to support running miscellaneous windows applications fairly well, up front. Things like Turbo Tax, Quicken, old games and the like will just need to work, out of the box, and not require special knowledge to install. Dorking around with Wine should NOT be required.

What apps will it come with? It's going to need to have a fairly complete stable of applications, starting with Office. They are going to need to look and feel almost exactly like Microsoft's offerings and do everything Office does and more.

Will it infringe on somebodies IP? I'm sure Microsoft has some kind of IP or patent on the look and feel or something they can use to drag the project over the coals and kill it.

If you do this, PLEASE use Apache licensed stuff!

I don't know. Seems Putin is making inroads into getting the old gang back together.

Nothing apparently.

Linus is blaming somebody else for Linux not taking the desktop, this is not to say he's not right, it's just amusing that he would blame others and tells me he's not interested in helping with the solution.

Where I work I have a Windows desktop, but web browsing is done on Linux. You wouldn't know it though if you didn't look close.

There are places that use Linux desktops.

Boy, you just insist on reading into my post what's not there, twice now. I think you are doing it on purpose....

Torvalds is right... I just find it amusing that he is quoted to be blaming somebody else and being "True to form." Clear yet?

Cannot disagree with you on most of this. Yes Fusion reactors are much more complex and therefor expensive to make. However, you have to look at the whole return on investment throughout the life cycle of the plant. Fission creates some really nasty byproducts in large volumes that will have to be safely disposed of/stored for centuries before it is safe. Fusion creates nasty things too, but they are a lot less in volume and decay a whole lot faster. Less volume + faster decay = much less expensive to operate.

Then there is the whole safety question where Fusion wins hands down. You want to stop generating heat? Just stop putting fuel into it and it's going to stop pretty quick. Fission? It can take months to get a reactor in a stable thermal condition...

But, we can only argue about this for now. Neither of us knows if Fusion will be cost effective or not. You think not, I'm not so sure, it's still possible this will work out. Until we try though, we will never know if the existing designs are going to be cost effective or not. But I caution you, even things like Steel and Aluminum which we use almost like sand, used to be extremely expensive. Can you imagine what it would have cost to build a steel bridge in the 1800's? Or how much a light aircraft's weight in Aluminum sheeting would have cost then? It would have been a LOT of money. Now? Cheap, so cheap we throw away aluminum cans without a second thought.

I never said he was wrong... Only that he's true to form..