I've been asking on the Ubuntu forums but getting no replies so thought I would ask here. What brand/model (on top of what OS) are you using that works well out of the box in linux? I am wanting to use it with my new almost smart phone (call it a C student phone), a motorola i465. I'd like to both suck the pics off of it plus sometimes use it for net connection/tethering. Thanks in advance, I want to take advantage of all the sales going on now. I bought a local to me unbranded one that doesn't even register when I plug it in to a known good working USB slot. So that's going back. There's only three places local to me that carry these things, one was out, one I bought, the other has some brand I never heard of for 30 bucks, and I know you can get them cheaper than that, so I will have to buy online.

As an aside, how well do those bluetooth keyboards work? I think eventually, as in real soon now, phones could cover normal low requirements desktop needs, and I want to get in on this as soon as it is more affordable, as it will be once all the ARM machines get out there..

I have no idea what this California fetish is to beat themselves over the head with the economic fail stick, but they are just loving on that all the time. WHACK! thankyousirmayIhaveanother?

    Continually snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Cap and trade is *transparently* the lamest way to improve the environment and the economy. You just couldn't think of anything better to defeat both purposes than cap and trade.

"I just do not feel that his orientation is other than Wall Street, and has not been other than Wall Street, and will not be other than Wall Street. And quite frankly all the gambling on Wall Street is doing nothing to put people back to work in America and rebuild our economy."

Pretty much nails it.

We have an economy and policy that is 100% protectionist for wall street jobs, and that's it. They won't call it protectionism, that's all. They'll say that and use it as a swear word for any job *other* than a wall street job, then it becomes evil and a bad idea.

Just for reference, a sort of cool site for getting more info on your coins, or what you might want to get for coins.

What happens is you go to it, it automagically takes today's prices in silver (or gold) and you can reference any of your old "junk" silver US or canadian coins to see what the value of the metals in them is worth in today's dollars, and also what percentage increase this has become over their first "face value" issuing denomination.

Here's a for-instance, just for today (they are tables so no direct copy and paste)

1916-1945 Mercury Dime issuing price/face value $0.10, at todays prices this represents $1.3368 in the silver metal contained therein, for a rise in value over face since then of 1336.82%

So therefore all things considered for a non numismatic collector's coin, just for bullion stashing purposes, as close to a buck thirty apiece today as you can get would be an asking price, I would expect you being charged between $1.40 to a buck fifty buying small quantities at your local coin shop.

http://coinflation.com/

The answer is, when it is tungsten being passed off as gold. (I checked, it is very close so this is possible, gold @ 19.32 grams per cc, tungsten @ 19.25.)

The GATA boys are being proven correct as time goes on, the world gold market has been seriously manipulated. Paper gold shuffle-arounds are being manipulated, the real amount compared to the paper amount is not the same figure. A lot of "naked short selling" going on there, and probably why these fake bars were made up.

    This is why I LOL at the folks who keep trusting their paper gold "held for them at the secure vaults" etc like they don't have "room to store it" someplace. And you can see now why all these nations are demanding that their gold be brought back home from like the london vaults makes sense, they want to check it. Some Ac yesterday on some thread was saying this like he couldn't store ten grand prices today of gold. jeez loweez that fits in your pocket! You can't securely hide something like that? A roll of eagles is 20 coins, that's only half a roll and I know you can stick a roll in your pocket.

Hey, just a general question. has anyone here, based on my economic posts, or a least partially, actually gone out and stared accumulating coins, silver or gold, when they hadn't previously?

I have found the easiest way at the extreme low end this side of poverty level is to swap clad normal crap coins for silver. Just throw your change in a can, when you have enough, roll it up, take it to a coin shop, get some silver.

edit: had a spelling typo so I fixed it. I'll add this too. This swap crap coins for silver is a variation on investing/going into another business idea I first heard listening to neal boortz on the radio a long time ago, he suggested using your singles, never spending them, just using them for a new business, hold for one year, then take your stash and start a new revenue stream with it. This means the smallest you can spend for any purchases in FRNs is a fiver. Well, I already got all the work I want, so I just get PMs instead with spare scratch. (saved for a few months change, turned it in the other day got four ounces of silver, that's an example) Someone doing that with singles could accumulate a nice little stack of coins though. It also enforces physical fiscal discipline, you think twice amd thrice about buying something stupid when you have to pay five bucks for it. Instead of a coffee to go, you get a thermos and make your coffee at home, stuff like that. No more candybars, cokes, none of that. You just never spend any singles or change on normal day to day stuff, and that's it. Man, it works, it makes you *think*, you'd be surprised how much actual useless crap you have wasted your cash on when you start doing it.

What a coincidence, just a few days after that other story about teh evile hacksters hitting brazil before

The zombie government (pdf, five pages, first paragraph, page two nails it simply and succinctly, all you really need to grok to beat the herds..and zombie herds are something you really want to beat, or at least slide away to the side and not get noticed by)

Greg Gordon for McClatchy newspapers is doing a jam up job with these Goldman stories.

Low Mileage, a cream puff, only driven by an old lady on Sundays

Repo man

Goldman meets RICO..it just needs to happen

Now what is intriguing to me is why these foreign buyers of over priced and under risked securities are just eating it raw. This is billyuns of bucks they got took for. What are they getting out of not complaining that they got burned with massive fraud? Just PR image or something, not want to be publicly embarrassed about being rookies?

Now inside the US, I know why no official complaints, Goldman owns the system, they aren't going to bust themselves, nor will their employees and drinking buddies in "government" do it either. I mean, maybe it will happen, let's see though. This is rather significant stuff to be ignored. And where is the left on this? I mean the grassroots? The "teabaggers" on the right are oft hooted at here, yet even back when the shrub dudes were still "in power", they were the ones who flooded congress critters offices with phone calls and faxes, etc and said DON'T BAIL THEM OUT. That was a year and some small change ago now. On the left at the control level, you have ..grayson and kucinich (and I like both those guys) bitching about these scumbags, that's it? And where are the mass left wing demonstrations against the bailouts and enriching the crooks at everyone else's expense? A few bussed in Union members is the sum total they can come up with at that bankers convention protest? Dang Vern, back in the day, sabre toothed badgers and so on, the Pleistocene, if my memory serves me still, "the left" could get hundreds of thousands out every other weekend.

What I am saying is, can it be time yet when we can see this issue of high level economic skullduggergy and gross corruption goes way beyond democrat/republican politics and it doesn't matter a single bit which of the two political gangs or which fearless cult leader is in charge, that they all suck and are crooks more than not? Can we, huh? Can we make a breakthrough here, at least on one little slice of the internet?

  Ron Paul's (and I like him as well) audit the fed bill just got "gutted"..by a dem. Why is this? Where is our "change", when do things get back to being honest and open (ha..ha...ha), and bad guys rooted out? There are a few thousand "terrorists" in ashcanistan, swell, hard to find, they hide in caves, dress up like goats, whatever... How about the same limited number few thousand tops *pure economic terrorists* who commute between NYC and DC, when do they get rooted out? House, majority D, Senate, majority D, executive branch, D. That about covers it, doncha think, how much longer is this going to be blamed on them "other guys"? It's a full year now since the first bailout, where's the real action? They don't *need* satellite surveillance and predator drones to find the domestic terrorists now, do they, so what's the "hold up"? (pun intended there) Like I asked before, why are these guys still in business, they make enron and worldcom look like amateur 7-11 stickup artists.

Any defenders of the great "progressive" side want to 'splain this, why no real action when you got ALL the power now, why it is just the same old junk, same old criminals getting away with it, same old dudes still running things? How long can you keep blaming it all on "Rs" anyway? Hell, those pirates are getting PAID the big bucks to get away with it, and it's record bonus time again, yaaa! Oh ya, they are thinking about "regulating' exec pay....well, that would be taken care of if those dudes were SITTING IN THE POKEY where they belong, again, doncha think?

Now, I am neither D nor R, I vote as split of a ticket as I can come up with and at least try to identify the half honest folks, that's the best I can do there. But tell ya, this partisan "our side smells like roses and their side reeks and causes ALL the trouble and we are pure as the driven snow" happy horsecrap I've been reading the entire time I have been on the net, since 95, has gotten way old. I think it is safe to say that viewpoint has been throughly debunked by verifiable happenings.

I have yet to see any credible evidence that either political gang is anything but mostly a criminal gang, and as such, I simply cannot support nor get very enthusiastic about any of this every two year or four year big election nonsense when they just keep swapping around the same crimes and we just keep exchanging one Don and "family" for another.

Cutting it rather close there, eh wot?

I mean, dang, six hours reserve? That's *it*? That's stretching it even for a "just in time" mentality. Suppose it went a few days with no natural gas and pipes started freezing all over in buildings? Once they thawed out, the mother of all leaks to fix, plus greatly reduced firefighting potential *just* when people were trying to burn anything to keep warm, maybe in rather dubious ways.

Me, I don't cotton to freezing, been there, shivered that, no thanks. Four cords up, plus a completely full propane tank, and another cord on the ground waiting for splitting and stacking when I get around to it, and I have four trees down in the woods not even cut up yet, maybe close to two more cords, at least one anyway.

I'm not paranoid, I am *practical*. Keep at least a year/season ahead with food and basic fuel.

I think if I lived there I would be looking for a little backup, even if it was just stockpiling some drums of kerosene for a room heater or something.

Lone nutcase or whistleblower?

Latest Ukraine flu news

Just putting this here for a "great cull theory" reference point

More Goldman shenanigans

"It all hinges on what the higher level execs knew" paraphrased. Uh huh like THEY didn't know what they were buying and selling and recommending to others was crapola over valued "liar's loans". I mean just that phrase itself was already in the common public sphere by then. So these execs never heard of that, news to them, "why shazzam we didn't know nuthin' about that..wow, what a coincidence...really, all those mortgage securities we were unloading and recommending others to buy and saying they were good deals were like rank bets? Gee, maybe someone should have told us..we didn't know...ohh..you lost billions but we cleaned up..oh well,investing is sure risky business ain't it...well, we didn't break any laws, so neener neener"

Sorry guys for delay on my last JE and getting back to the replies and stuff, looks like it got "lively" by the number of replies waiting for me. First it took me about a whole dang day to do an upgrade over the net with the new ubuntu. It appears to have finally arrived here intact and is working, I did disable nvidia drivers first though.

Anyway, I keep trying but I can NOT get into my own thread, it keeps giving me an error page saying it doesn't exist. WTF and stuff. I can get to other threads just fine, but *not that*. I have no idea whatsoever what is going on.

I'll try again tomorrow or later on tonight, got more stuff to do now, sorry again, I WILL read and reply as required when I can get in.

Some core samples taken from a lake that had been glaciated over in Canada are showing that the warming of the earth from the mid 20th century was/has been fairly different from all previous warming eras for 200 thou years (news release) Recent changes in a remote Arctic lake are unique within the past 200,000 years (abstract, no open science freebie paper).

I wonder....what *really* changed mid 20th century..we were already using tons of coal and lakes of petroleum previously..nukes being set off is a radical change and maybe a biggee that started mid 20th century. If anyone can read it/has access, see if they address that anyplace, thanks.

And wouldn't THAT be something (really, I am just making pretty casual conversation here in a "what if" category that I admit is pretty far out and that I have zero knowledge of note in) if a thousand nuke tests had..dunno...screwed with the dilithium magnetic flux resonance storm shield/anti shield cosmic rayz neutrino feedback loop..errr.. you know what I mean, a buncha physics jazz that is still unknown. Could be the dang co2 got not much at all to do with it now maybe, and one of the reasons models seem to be getting it close but no cigar, some other effect that has been not noted, so it isn't being modeled, and that which we can't do anything at all about now, massive "war on carbon" or not.

I kept wondering and wondering when it was going to just dawn on someone with a few bucks that we had a ton of empty car assembly plants in the US, going at firesale prices cheap, millions out of work, while the new markets for electric cars are here, with not much to fill them yet! A zillion buck market, virtually untapped, a gold rush in the making.

  Combining these bits of data and by-passing the traditional stuck in the no brains no pains tar pits of the automotive dinosaurs self inflicted extinction mentality just made sense, and finally Fisker Automotive will be doing this.

Now, here's some more for a factory retrofit

  Model A type industrial windchargers, made by the tens of thousands so they are cheap, not the dozens, suitable for personal home use or small business, etc (not those giant expensive mega watt jobbers, say a 20 kw model)

Back to cars, stock older model conversion factories, for either conversion to pure electric, or natural gas drive. Pick a common make and model where there are millions out there, convert those, specialize, a sedan, a pickup and a minivan, done. The new retroride company motors, inc

Solar thermal hot water and hot air units, much cheaper than solar PV and still useful

Modular hybrids, the main vehicle is a cheap electric,(must be cheaper than any hybrids on the market like the prius), the gas or diesel motor and generator goes on a generic trailer, and there's your extended range now when you need it once in awhile, sold seperately or as a package deal. No need to wait for the mr fusion ultimate batery breakthrough to ge range then. Current average commute is 33 miles, cheap batteries can do this now, don't even need lithium for that, you can use golf cart batts to keep costs down.

Solar PV carports, for charging electric cars

Integrated small scale food production hydroponic greenhouse kits, assemble in backyard in suburbia...profit

Hey, forget flying cars, just too wrong,too heavy, too big, ain't gonna work, they tried it. But how about flying motorcycles? Bikes are very lightweight, great power to weight ratio, much better than most cars, have a nifty vertical stabilizer effect from the spinning rear wheel. You could make a bolt on plane/wing/PTO attachment that ran off the real wheel with friction going to an overhead prop, and have a vehicle you could fly in to any little strip, break out a wrench or two, and a few minutes later drive off on your road bike. And vice versa. ..and stuff like that there, tons of things that old factories could be repurposed for

I've been saying this all along for several years now,(heck, it is really DECADES IRL since I had this idea) just abolish state licensed marriage completely and be done with it, then straights and gays and otherwise would have a level political and economic playing field. Here is an Obama administrator saying the same thing (similar) now.

I think his proposal doesn't go far enough though, and even state licensed "civil unions" can be stricken, they violate freedom of association, and there should be no overall "numbers" attached either, like just two people. Even using past historical precedent, just two people has never been all there was. Pluralities have been quite common in many cultures, and there is nothing odd about it at all.

If you want a ceremony and recognition inside your "community" whatever that is, swell, nothing stopping you, that's between you, your partner or partners, and your pastor, padre, rabbi, ayatollah, shaman, kahuna, grand lunar priestess, dudes down to the bar, your bowling league friends, whatever, because that is YOUR business and no one else's. I celebrate your celebration and declared commitment..whatever it is. Ya'all have fun, live long and prosper, or get long and perspire, and all of that, *your choice*.

  As per the government and economics, it should be one human by one human by one human, and that's it. Any stuff you want to codify into law to salt to taste, you do it with a normal contract. Anything. There isn't any exception there I can think of that can't be addressed with a normal contract, a cheap one to boot, something you all sign in front of a notary.

End state discrimination. It is just wrong.

There's some other junk in the article, but I found that part interesting because we were just talking about that the other day. I see no reason why in particular straights and gays can't unite around this single and obvious human rights issue and get the state OUT of "recognizing or not" your personal relationships. Why would heavily traditional religious people even WANT the state to have a say in their relationship in the first place? And why would gay folks DEMAND that they be included in this ridiculous charade and abrogation of born with freedoms?

  It is NONE of the state's business *at all* who you hang around with, fool around with, or live with. As such, no permit whatsoever should be required. When you have to get a permit, permission, a slip that says you have some "right",a "license", it has ceased to be a right and has turned into a state owned privilege, and you just lost an important aspect of your freedoms.