Even the only version of *NIX successful with consumers en masse, i.e., Mac OS X, is mediocre at gaming. (typing this up on my Mac).

And the other reason - Windows Media Center. Using the XBox360 as a media extender to watch things I've recorded with Windows 7 is very nice. Sorry, not interested in screwing around with MythTV et al.

I saw Skype character (executive) singing the praises of MS acquiring them and extolling the synergies because both Skype and MS innovated, blah, blah, blah. It was at that point I stopped the video, he had nothing meaningful to say. It was just rhetoric. MS hasn't innovated in 20 years. Windows 7 is good (whatever Mac OS X/LINUX people, it's great for gaming) but MS has drawn its revenues from product lines that are now decades old. That is not innovation.

Arguably one could give MS a point for the XBox360. However a gaming console isn't innovating. On a tangent they can be awarded points for XBox Live which is more robust for multi-player gaming and has engendered strong communities. Sony's PSN isn't as strong, something you'll consistently hear from many people, including those who cover the video game industry, e.g., Machinima.com.

There tends to be a lot of fanboy hatred against MS but the reasons people cite are generally crap. I live in Seattle and many tech people I've talked agree that MS' biggest problem is the person at the top - Steve Ballmer. He has no vision whatsoever and at best is a chief operating officer.

Ballmer can't even hire someone to find new locations for retail fronts... so what does he do, he opens stores by Apple's . Microsoft erected a big(ger) store just a few doors down from Apple's in one of the malls in the Seattle area (Bellevue Square). MS couldn't even pick some other part of the mall, it had to be close to Apple's. Wow, just wow.

We all know who the omega is here.

-M

>"True Communism" absolutely does NOT require an elite ruling class. Hell, it expressly forbids an elite ruling class
"true communism" implicitly demands a ruling class to arbitrate the "equality" of everyone

I think you do have one thing right:

>Tell me, seriously, which system would you prefer? One where everone wins, or one where 1% of the population wins?

the 1% solution every time. I want a society where everyone strives to be best they can be, not where everyone only works as well as the lowest common denominator so everyone can be equal. I look forward to the day when we can seek to better ourselves rather than work for a living. The only way I see that happening is to keep floating that 1% to the top

However you can (IMHO) make a very good argument that the "excessive rewards for doing damage to the economy" are directly a result of goverment enacting socialist regulations on the markets. As an example the subprie mortage crisis is a direct result of the goverment not allowing banks to lend in their own self interest (as well as removing the distinction between commercial and investment banks) . To "fix" that problem the market created mortgage backed securities, which meant that the quality of loans wasn't nearly as important as the quantity. Of course it's not that cut and dried, and there were more contributors but you see where this is heading.

One can certainly take the position that capitlism sucks, however the alternatives all suck a whole lot more.

So what you're saying is "we need to stop using screws, because I've got a really good wrench, and once you learn to work my way you'll love it too"

The tax cuts were for everyone that pays taxes- not just "the rich". You are certainly correct in that folks with trust funds don't pay tax on them - nor should they as the tax was already paid on that money(thus an income tax not a savings tax). Estate taxes are when wealth is transfered via death (and the estate tax is what generated a whole generation of "trust fund" babies since trusts don't change hands they are not subject to estate taxes). The poor (since they are already not paying anything in federal taxes) did not get a reduction from 0

We don't have a wealth tax in america, we have a bracketed income tax. The "tax cuts for the rich" mantra is pure feldercarb. You have exactly the same loopholes and tax strategies available to you that the "wealthy" do. There is no "escape" from taxation. Corporations however do have a whole bunch of tax advantages that regualar citizens do not since (theoretically) the result of letting a corporation fail (or even make less profit) would be a reduction in job force and overall competitiveness resulting in a net loss of tax income due to the loss of employee income tax and additional unemployment benefit burden. Now that effectiveness (particularly in a global economy) is debatable (and complex). You can see by this paper (and the included chart) http://taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/1001547-Why-No-Income-Tax.pdf that very few of the "rich" are "escaping" taxes, and fully half of the population is paying no federal taxes at all (and they aren't the rich).

Of course using revenue to decrease the deficit is a good idea - that's what the tea party has been advocating all along. America takes in something on the order of 100 billion a month. What the democrats refuse to do is accept the fact that we cannot keep spending money faster than we recieve it. Something has to give, and the republicans (correctly in my opinion) said that it shouldn't be the people that have to pay more taxes, but the goverment needs to spend less (of the already large revenue) on things other than the debt.

Small basic is the version of basic without all the more difficult concepts to master (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/ff384126.aspx). There is nothing wrong with python per se- I do not think it is as readable as basic however- consider a simple adder function:

class adder:
          def __init__(self, value=0):
                  self.data = value # initialize data
          def __add__(self, other):
                  self.data += other # add other in-place

"Why in my days..." (use your imagination to fill in the rest)

Not the 1% who use LINUX desktops. Spare me the trolling. I like Ubuntu a lot, but I'm a tech person. Most people aren't, get over it.