Well that's one way of looking at it for the "government is out to get us" crowd, another is that the U.S. Congress sometimes intends to protect Unites States assets from those almost mythical "not-the-United-States" places out there that the former crowd seem to be oblivious to.

I'm not for or against protectionist policies in general, but all this "big X and the gub'mint are conspiring against us" blather that paints things as "X got what they wanted therefore it's BAD FOR US", that's just really stupid reasoning.

You are completely deluded, if people had to buy new i-devices every year or two, Apple investors would be happy as clams and packing more money in.

Apple's problem IS that you don't have to buy a new one every year, so they will need to keep making/breaking into new markets.

I have no idea what your idea of obsolescence is, but you can't really grow a business by just making things like hammers... you have to invent screwdriver 2.0 eventually even if it makes hammers look so "yesterday".

You're implying that a distinction between the two is "MOB RULE" while the electoral college process is "MOB RULE". Ask a democrat in Texas if it ain't so! That's also a state where electors have no legal requirements to vote as pledged, they just do.

One distinction is a state _could_ ignore the popular will of its constituents. "NOT MOB RULE" to paraphrase you. They don't, do they? Could you give practical examples of a need to do so?
You can write it in scary caps all you want, it doesn't change the fact that it's what we have today, it follows the principles of democracy.

Another is states are granted electors based on the size of their congressional delegation. Meaning for one thing that regardless of the number of constituents, they get two electors for their two senators. This weights your vote a bit state-by-state, but hardly makes it undemocratic.

FYI to readers - this dreck boils down to state rights issues and silly wordplay to [dis]associate our form of government with the names of political parties. The United States of America is a representative democracy AND a republic. The electoral college is a compromise between the will of the people and the will of the states.

It's probably a good thing, but not for the bat-shit insane reasons like "it protects your liberty."
Be wary of arguments for state power that put you vs. federal government. It's like your cable company running whining ads "blah blah wont reach an agreement with us so in a few weeks so you will lose these channels" trying to pull you into THEIR problem. States have senators to represent them. They are HALF of congress.

Well where do you think new ideas come from?

Do you think they take "regular" people and plant them in the ground, water them with miracle grow or something? So if they didn't grow in Apple soil, it doesn't count?

Really, I'm trying to figure out the logic behind this, like how a company known to boast of its innovation is expected to grow talented employees on trees.
Apple is not THAT good, you are really showing your insecurities.

The other way of looking at it is you might not understand their patent's claims. AT&T may have patented something similar, but different enough. Who knows? Sorry, what a dumb question, you guys know everything.

Why do you disagree, his point was there is no "Knife Professional" in a kitchen where you play with knives all day. If there were, it would be because there are too many knives for cooks to maintain, and your day would be mostly spent cleaning and sharpening them, it wouldn't be a job for people who actually like doing things with knives. If you like doing something for fun, don't do it for work.

There ARE Linux administration positions, but your time will be divided amongst application support and a whole host of other activities. If a company has straight up pure Linux admins, it would be because they have LOTS of "knives" and you'd spend most of your time using tools to manage them, like Chef, Puppet, etc.

To anyone dreaming of becoming a "Linux professional", please get it into your head right now, it is a TOOL. You might choose to become a carpenter because you love working with hammers, but your work doesn't revolve around your tools, your tools revolve around your work, so if you have a problem using screw drivers and nail guns, stay out of the profession.

I don't get the point of this, frames rendered out of sync with vertical refresh are already garbage. Variability of inter-frame latency and correspondingly variable rate are just another good reason to lock your frame rate to something consistently achievable like 30/60 fps.

Anything inconsistent, and not in sync is just plain dumb.

Are you joking or does your desktop PCs power button not perform a soft shutdown in your OS? I'm pretty sure every system sold with XP on it has this feature.

Um.. I'm more of a Mac person, but you can right click your desktop, hit personalize, and pick Windows Classic.

Then right click the taskbar, properties, set Taskbar buttons to Never combine, check Use small icons, and you have yourself a Windows 98 desktop pretty much. I'm sure you can also find your way to the Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar option if you try.

It isn't all that hard by Windows standards dude. Maybe you should just leave your computer with default settings until you are more familiar with it. You were asking for that one, you're welcome.

I've heard this argument before, but never bothered to look for any mods, just going by my gut feeling that if I hadn't heard of any, they aren't out there.
So I looked, and unless someone can cough up better examples, the TF2 mod scene is fucking garbage, please excuse my language.

To put this in context, the original Team Fortress was a Quake mod. Team Fortress _itself_ had several well known and popular mods. There were even sizable custom map scenes within these mod scenes.

Mods very substantially changed the gameplay of Quake. Preceding full mods like TF, Quake Rally, Air Quake, etc. were weapon mods that merely added new weapons to the game. THOSE put all the TF2 "mods" I've found to shame. I don't even want to get started on total conversions.

My conclusion is anyone putting TF2 mods forward as a sign of the rebirth of PC gaming is _deluded_, or has NO IDEA what PC gaming in its heyday was.

Most people look up the cost of a new battery for a three year old laptop and just buy a new laptop.

Your logic doesn't make sense, if he's overpaid because his testimony is not worth much or stating the obvious, where on Earth is there room to express a viewpoint that does not represent independent research? He's not making outrageous claims is he?

Maybe he is just overpaid, or highly reputable and asked for high compensation for testifying in a high profile case.

"What a shit country it is. It has no rule of law"

I just saw THAT get +5 Insightful.
You would think we just invaded Ecuador and bulldozed their embassies in other countries. /. needs to stay out of politics or throw away the moderation system. Giving random expiring mod points does not work with these topics, everyone has an opinion and it goes straight into +1 Like -1 Hate mode sucking up mod points that could have been used on better topics that day.

On the other hand, maybe it increases the quality of moderation done to surrounding articles by taking away points from stupid people? What a quandary.

Which is saying we didn't sign a treaty that we didn't sign? The horror.
God, the +5 ACs on this page are stomach churning.

Slashdot, I know you're trying real hard to be radio talk show, but there's a lot of tech news out there, you don't need to pander to these vapid morons to get page views and commentary. Look at the quality on this page. Are page views all you care about?

Why don't you guys just own up and call this place Weekly World News for Nerds?

Out of a total lack of respect. Should we pretend to be surprised?