Speaking of nuclear, Nixon actually killed off the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment and fired Oak Ridge Laboratory lead Alvin Weinberg because he was advocating ditching the liquid metal fast breeder reactor in favor of the much safer molten salt reactors. Nixon did this to promote building Light Water Reactors in California and protect jobs there rather than delaying them for a new technology to be developed. The ABSOLUTE KICKER is that Weinberg also wanted molten salt reactors because their high heat can be used for desalination (and their ability to scale to small sizes would make them ideal for developing countries that needed desalination as well as some electricity).

I can count Bush's environmental policies on two fingers - banning of incandescent light bulbs (which, honestly, was going to happen eventually) and banning CFC asthma inhalers to support the Montreal Treaty, even though those were one of the tiniest contributors to ozone depletion and seriously impacted asthmatics (for one, it was the only over the counter asthma remedy, for two, the replacement, HFA inhalers, were patented, prescription only, and were only tested on healthy adults in the FDA's "fast track" program, which is the same thing they do to test GMOs, and 3/4 of the manufacturers used an allergen, alcohol, as part of the propellant, so that went over poorly...).

If there's one president I wish had failed to get into office, it's Bush, though Obama has cut it close a few times (both of them have TERRIBLE financial policy, IMO - defund Obamacare? Only the assistance to the poor was unfunded - Bush's Medicare D wasn't funded AT ALL)...

Saying "Hey guys, these are the works that I've produced recently that are currently eligible for awards. Vote for me, please!" is not the same as saying, "Hey guys, here is a slate of works by various authors (most of whom are not me) that I think you should vote for."

Oops... I replied upthread before reading this. Apologies.

Yes, I read that too. I think that you are reading way too much into what is written there. It seems pretty clear to me that he is planning on casting his own ballot on the merits of the works nominated, but that he understands those that would vote against the sad puppy slate on the theory that intentionally disruptive behaviour should not be encouraged. Moreover, even if I granted your interpretation, that would be Scalzi pushing against a given slate, rather than pushing his own slate of nominees, which is what was claimed by ageoffri in the first post to which I replied.

I asked for a slate of candidates posted or endorsed by Scalzi. You replied with a the sad puppy slate, which was posted by Larry Correia. Thanks for the attempt, but that doesn't answer my question. The condescension is a nice touch, though.

Citation, please? I've noticed that Scalzi leaves a thread open on his website where people can push their own recommendations or slates, but I don't think that I have ever seen him endorse any particular slate of candidates. Again, my recollection may be flawed and my quick look at the Google may not have turned up whatever you have in mind, so I am more than willing to be shown that I am wrong---but for that to happen, I would need you to point out where Scalzi has posted such a slate (as I seem to be unable to find it myself).

Well we all saw how Title II killed wireless phone service back in 1993. I mean, who uses a cell phone these days?

I just bought a new laptop and the cheapest one that included 802.11ac was a $700 Dell - but that had absolutely shitty specs other than that (720p graphics, non-touch, a slow i5, Intel integrated 4000 graphics...). For $800 I got a much faster i7, nVidia 840 gpu (shitty, but better than Intel 4000 by far), and 1080p graphics in the same form factor, but only 802.11n wifi (which was in almost every other laptop I looked at as well). It is unfortunate, but 802.11ac is not widely adopted yet :(

Except vanilla html5/javascript won't let you touch the filesystem other than to load files (you can with extensions or using some other method like PHP). That makes it difficult to design an exploit as well as create a safety sandbox for the program itself. Flash is essentially an OS, so exploiting it makes exploiting the machine much easier. I've been hacked so many times with PHP vulnerabilities I've stopped using it and use my own coded CGI calls for file access.

Speaking of CGI, CGI's been around since 1993 and has pretty much all the vulnerabilities of whatever application it calls. I've used it for some strange stuff - kick of a csh, run a program that takes specifically (and well parsed) text as input and then elevate itself to root to load it as a crontab, run perl scripts, start a terminal on the web server as root when I didn't have root (exploited a root vulnerability and placed my little password protected file there, and then created a way to start it from my web browser - that eventually broke when my computer was refreshed and the hard coded DISPLAY was wrong), etc.

I have two Barracudas and neither shows any sign of failure. Neither are primary hard drives, though. They certainly outlived the 6-8 month life of my Death Star drives back in the day (before IBM sold its Desk Star unit to Hitatchi HGST - and the replacement from HGST have been rock solid - I have two that were replaced by HGST in 2003 that are still functional).

Really? I've had lots of problems with ASUS hardware and they replaced or repaired all of it under warranty. My laptop with an nVidia 8800M (I think that was the model) died twice under warranty and once just out, all three times due to the graphics card (which notoriously had problems). I've also sent in one graphics card under warranty and it got fixed.

Hmm... my GPU count is bad - I forgot the two returns under warranty for that laptop. GPU was my winner anyway, but it just extended its lead over hard drives.

Sapphire, on the other hand... RMA'd the same brand new card three times and was returned the same card with the same exact problem (it worked until you tried to use graphics memory and then crashed within 2 minutes). I marked the card with a dot sticker on my second return because I guessed they were just sending me the same unmodified card back. The third time I sent them a CD with a demo program I wrote that would cause the crash. Same card minus the CD returned to me.

Me too! I also find the foot pedal hard to use.

I've sort-of never had one die - I had one get loud as heck and need to be replaced, but it was still technically functioning. I've also had one stop, but after sucking the dust and spider webs out of it and the rest of the machine with a shop vac it started right up again. I've also replaced one where it didn't fix the problem (north bridge overheating, and I think it was shorting out).

Wish there were such an option for laptops. I replace mine due to critical component failure (usually display and/or graphics card) every 2-3 years. The last one lasted only 1 year and 3 days (3 days out of warranty) before having critical component failure (graphics card), but then I read if you pull it apart and push the nVidia card into the board, it fixed the problem. It did, but after having to do this every time I travel, some of the ribbon cables broke. Now it only works with a separate keyboard (some keys work, but not all) and mouse (the trackpad ribbon cable broke completely).

So far for laptops: ASUS (display), HP (display), ASUS (graphics card, and a known problem with that model - still sort of works as a desktop), Dell (power supply and disk drive, probably fried by the bad PSU, replaced under warranty twice within 6 months of purchase and then I sold the lemon before it was a year old). I'm on my third ASUS so we'll see how that goes. So far it is the best laptop I've ever owned both in construction and stability.