Nero played the violin as Rome burned

OK, try and pay attention now; the violin was developed in the 16th century, 1500 years AFTER Emperor Nero died. This is ancient propaganda.

Sorry but that is wrong. Linux is a kernel. Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc are distributions wrapped around that kernel.

The government does not have authority to lie to courts in order to obtain a conviction.

The government may not have the authority to lie to courts _BUT_ unless someone hold them accountable then it is a moot point. A law that is not renforced is essentilly a law that has been rescinded. America is quickly reaching a point, if we are not there already, where their are two systems of law; one for the wealty, the privledged and the corporations and one for the rest of us. Guess who is getting fucked hard ?

I just got the mental image of you rolling over on your back and peeing on yourself just like a dog going into submission.

Friend, I'm guessing that you have never served in the military. If you have, please tell us which branch and where were you stationed.

The problem with Austin is that it is surrounded by Texas and is at the mercy of the state legislator which, as the late great Molly Ivins would tell you, is one of the most stupid and reactionary in this country. Austin may be groovy and progressive but once you leave the corporate bounds of Austin you are in Texas, set your watch back 150 years.

A friend of mine once worked for a company in San Jose, CA. that the owners decided to move to Austin. More than 60% of the company quit rather than live in G*D forsaken Texas. As much as people jump up and down about how much better the tech industry and the living standard is in Texas the fact is that it is damn near impossible to get tech workers to leave California for Texas.

America today is NOT the country my ancestors fled Eastern Europe for nor is it the country my wife and I grew up in. America is now a country run for the benefit of the wealthy, the privileged and the corporations. The CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, etc. now exist to keep the powerful in charge and to detect and eliminate any movement that will challenge the status quo. Google "Green is the new Red"

But the problem with Austin is that it is surrounded by Texas. Traveling in any direction the moment you leave Austin you are waist deep in loud, ignorant, obnoxious assholes. I used to work for a company in Sunnyvale, CA. that announced that it was moving to Austin. They kept going on and on about how cheap housing was and how big a house you could get for the money you were paying in the Bay Area. Even with all that more than half the company quit rather than move to G*D forsaken Texas. The company did move and was out of business within a year.

You could double my salary and I would still never move to Texas.

I'm still waiting for PHP to be completely case sensitive, a sane scoping scheme and real object oriented (can you say polymorphism)

Thank G*D for the 22nd Amendment

My objection to this technique has always been that by doing this, you essentially lose the people that have skills and can get jobs, and keep the people who don't have skills and can't get jobs, weakening your company. I'd generally rather choose who to make redundant, even if it costs a bit more, and keep the people who I know are actually productive around.

Correct, mostly. I have seen this happen in a number of companies I have worked out, The mgr starts a round of layoff, either by laying people off of annoying workers until they quit, what also happens is that the smart, talented workers they want to keep read the writing on the wall and leave. The mgt tries to compensate by ramping up the off shore offices but soon discover that it's damn near impossible and really expensive to replace the good people who walked out.

Rinse then repeat.

It's 2:00AM, some "very important server" has just gone down.

[Pointy Headed Management]"We have to get this server working or we'll lose millions an hour"

To which I would reply: "I thought you moved all those jobs it India so that we could have a 'Follow the Sun' model and none of us would have to woken out of a sound sleep, Bangalor will take care of it. Well, what happend to that plan?"

Vacuum Tubes ? Really ? Aside from guitar / bass amplifiers and hi end stereo equipment who uses vacuum tubes ? And $37.1 billion ? Who knew

Look up "premillennial dispensationalism". It explains why the fundies love Israel so much. It has very little to do with the Jews but it's all about jebuss.