and a total waste of money.. typical bureaucrat thinking.

I work for a snow removal company in a more northerly city. We service some 300 commercial properties in our area, and a have a contract for servicing city streets when the city's crews can't keep up. In additon, we have a constant pool of subcontractors that we can tap for extra help when events require it.

The only difference between a "salt truck" and a "dump truck" is a salt spreader attached to the back gate. Ties right into the PTO system. Buy a stack of those, subcontract with some of the local haulage or construction companies that have dump trucks, and in that rare event of a winter storm, have a plan in place where these companies report to various city maintenance yards for outfitting and loading with salt, and get them out on routes covering the major roads. Highways being the priority.

Instead of $55,000,000 worth of trucks added to a city's fleet, all you really need is under $1m worth of salt spreaders and a bit of logistical coordination. That itself would make a world of difference. And they could use the money saved for some Public Service Announcements like "What is that white stuff falling from the sky?" and "No, it's not cocaine, get back in your cars and quit trying to snort it." and "Snow is slippery, drive a little slower."

A full pardon.

Then a medal.. I'm thinking maybe the Presidential Medal of Freedom...

Then a large statue on the national mall, depicted collectively with other whistleblowers in a monument to those who risked their lives and freedom (and in some cases, lost it) to expose government abuses.

Windows 9 should be fairly decent. It seems like Microsoft works on an "every other version" model.. one version will be designed totally by their marketing department, and basically be a flashy but unworkable piece of crap. The next version they actually let the engineers have a go at making something that works in a desperate attempt to save the franchise.

Having seen a great many of my friends 4 year olds... unless you want to be replacing that phone *weekly*.. you're going to need something damn near indestructible.. like the Sonim XP1300 Core, or, of course, the obligatory Nokia 3000 Series...

I have seen 4 year olds, when unattended for a second, put "Mommy's" Iphone/Android in the toilet, in the toaster, in the microwave, in the pool, bury it in the sandbox, drop it off the deck onto the flagstone patio to see if it would bounce, fling it across the room in a fit of pique...

Personally, my *opinion* is simply "no way in hell should a 4 year old, any 4 year old, have a cell phone, ever..".. but you didn't ask my opinion on that.. so my second option is just to recommend anything you can find that a Deity (should you subscribe to such beliefs) would have difficulty destroying.. That way it might last a few months vs a 4 year old...

"That potentially lethal force is legal because it is authorized by the Constitution which has been ratified by the people."

Oh really? I've been a US Citizen since birth and nobody's ever asked me to ratify it, and the same is true for every other living person born in this nation.

The reality is, a bunch of people who have long since died and been buried ratified the Constitution, and the consent of everybody who has come after them has simply been taken for granted by the state due to their peculiar geographic accidents of birth.

Not saying that the Constitution is a bad document, just saying that if the goal is to enfranchise citizenry, starting off with the assumption that a bunch of old guys who have long since become worm food were somehow "Magical Priests Guarding the Font of Wisdom" to such an extent that the Social Contract doesn't need to be renewed in subsequent generations is probably not the best way to go about it.

Damn.. looks like I have to boycott Amazon.com now... which is a shame, as I actually liked ordering things from them from time to time..

However, I still have my principles, and one of those is that I refuse to do business with companies that are involved with known Terrorist organizations..

I'm not a Linux expert by any means. I'd call myself "Noob+". Before switching to Linux about 7 years ago, I'd been what one might call a "Power User" of Windows since 3.1. XP Pro was my last Windows edition on my home system.

I'm not a coder. I'm not a "business professional". I'm just a guy who spends a lot of time puttering around on whatever strikes my fancy on my computer as a hobby. This last year I worked an office job for a construction company..Much of that time was spent on Windows 7.

I also am the local "computer nerd" who helps a bunch of people with their computer problems, and occasionally build systems for folks.. ranging from basic low end machines to some monster performance hardware.

My reason for switching was I got incredibly frustrated with Microsoft. I resented their "What do we want you to do today" approach to software... I got tired of having to install third party apps to get the basic functionality I wanted out of my system.. I got tired of the never-ending game of "whack the malware", got tired of the email spam.. (which decreased 70% within the first *week* of switching to Linux.. I don't know why exactly.)

So I snagged a copy of Ubuntu and took the plunge. I have not looked back. I've mucked around with a few distros, broken my installs with some ill-informed tinkering around "under the hood".. had problems getting various things to work, had to spend some time digging through forums for answers..

But even with the learning curve and my propensity for ill-informed tinkering... I've had probably 95% less problems with Linux. With Windows, I was having to reboot every time I installed a piece of software. With Linux, I basically reboot only when I wipe the drive and install a new distro to play with, or if we have a power failure. My system has uptime measure in months, whereas my Windows experiences needed a reboot about once a day.

Linux does what I need faster, lighter, and more efficiently than Windows ever has. My needs may not be the same as others.. but at present, there's only 1 reason I'd consider a Windows install.. (and I'd go 7 if I ever took that plunge again..) Games.

Games. That's it. Yes, I still have Linux problems.. audio in particular.. The learning curve is still a bit steep at times, especially when it comes to configuring.. But I run into *NONE* of the problems that all my Windows using friends are always calling me over to their houses to fix for them. I've even talked two of them into trying out Linux, and they're both committed Linux users now and loving it.

When I run Linux, once I get things working the way I like them... they do *just keep working* unless I fiddle with things I don't understand fully. Every once in a while and update breaks something.. 99% of the time it's something I "fiddled" with.. and I have to go re-fiddle to get it working again..

But what I love most.. absolutely most.. is that running Linux my system does what *I* tell it to. It doesn't tell me "you're not allowed to do that".. it doesn't try to set things up on its own, it doesn't phone home to some corporate babysitter.. It properly respects the user-OS relationship, and it just keeps plugging along doing its thing very reliably.

Metro, Much like Unity, fails on the desktop for one, blindingly simple reason..

I bought a desktop pc. I did not buy a tablet. I expect to be able to use my desktop pc like a desktop pc. If I had wanted a f**king tablet, I'd have bought one.

End of story.

"And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?"

Personally, I consider all broadcast media "news" to be "propaganda" and treat it as such. Doesn't matter the source, it's always one group or another lying to you in such a way as to promote their particular factional interests.

However, your usage of the term "left of center" both intrigues and amuses me. To begin with, I find it kind of absurd that anybody in this country could claim to be able to identify what the position of "Center" actually is. Ostensibly, it would be simply "the middle point between two extremes".. but.. seeing as how opinion variies so widely, and in so many different arenas, across so many different issues, philosophies, paths, etc.. I just don't think it can be judged to any degree of accuracy..

Further.. it reaises the question of delineation.. "center in what area"? If one says "the political spectrum".. then this field is largely *shaped* by Media and the 2 dominant political Parties themselves.. and rendered pretty much usueless by that fact. I mean, how can one measure "Bias" when the criteria for determining "bias" is set by the biased?

Additionally, I know a great many people who self-identify as Liberal or Conservative.. And they do so largely because of what Media they consume. The Fox News junkies can't have a decent discussion about any issue without working down the list of "conservative talking points" that were trotted out the day before by Sean Hannity et al, and the MSNBC addicts are every bit as bad..

Yet, when one makes the effort to chastise these people into actually discussing *issues*, and throwing their media addictions out the window for the purposes of discussion.. You come to find out that they don't actually seem to *agree* with a large majority of the particular "party line" that they habitually tow.

Personally.. I think that the whole "Liberal vs Conservative" conflict in this country is nothing more than a gigantic social engineering experiment to keep average people fighting amongst themselves while a small group of criminal elites in media, politics, and finance keep laughing their way to the bank... but that's just me.

My parents were both teachers for ~30 years at the high school level here in Illinois.. and then my mother went on to be an educational consultant and inservice provider for another 10 years after retiring from active teaching. As such, I grew up looking at both sides of the educational system more than the average person..

This problem you describe is not new. It's not even something that arose with the poorly named "No Child Left Behind" legislation. I remember Illinois started a program of heavier standardized testing during the early 1990's.. the IGAP tests.. 1993 or 1994 was when I first ran into one in high school.

The teachers at the time were stressed out and annoyed by that.. the tests themselves were abysmal.. I basically "failed" the IGAP "reading comprehension" portion despite getting a 35 out of a possible 36 at the time on the ACT. The next year, one of the better teachers was actually fired in a "scandal" because they released the test early to students to study with. I witnessed many teachers changing their curriculum content to teach directly to these idiotic tests.

Decentralized education, as you mention, can *possibloy* have some benefits.. limited experimentation, etc.. But what I've seen in practice is that it doesn't. What I have seen in practice is some of the most nonsensical bs ever to be invoked in the name of "education."

I speak of the "School Board" system. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have a neighborhood popularity contest between a bunch of disinterested status-seekers with no training or experience in education, and then award the winners collectively with pretty much full administrative control over school operations and curriculum... clearly lived in a different era and/or had mental health issues.

I remember school boards comprised of old religious wingnuts, football obsessed yuppies, and "sky is falling, protect the children" soccer moms. What I do not remember is a single member of the body responsible for education policy having any member upon it actually trained in *education*. As such, the "needs of the community" being represented were "regressive religious indoctrination attempts" and "getting a winning football team" and "don't teach anything remotely controversial"..

Which pretty much results in a completely bullsh*t education. It wasn't just my own school. Every single one I've run into in the surrounding 3 states was similarly disposed.

You can see similar idiocy on a nationwide scale after the Columbine tragedy.. where thousands of school administrators banned the wearing of trench coats in highschools. No rational mind can accept the proposition that trench coats cause violence.. simply because Wall Street is not a daily bloodbath. But it is this kind of knee-jerk, non-thinking decision making which arises from a focus on "the needs of the community", when non-educators make up the "community" representation and have executive authority over the school systems.

Further, the way schools are funded here.. by property taxes.. pretty much guarantees that poor areas desperately in need of resources and better educational opportunities will alreays remain poor and in desperate need, while the rich communities will put in their second olympic sized swimming pool on campus and have Mariott cater their lunchrooms.

During the 30+ years I've been observing things around here.. the "best and brightest" have never thought about becoming teachers.. or if they did, they taught for a year or two, became familiarized with the realities of the job, and left to pursue careers where they weren't abused constantly and could actually reap some rewards.

I'm frankly in favor of centralized education. I'm not, however, in favor of standardized testing or rigid frameworks dependant upon it. However, if one is going to centralize control over education.. it needs to be at a curriculum level, and it needs to be accompanied by centralized *funding*. It's not something that can be slapped in place overnight by an act of Congress.. but it is something that needs to be intelligently evolved over time by a concerted act of national will to improve conditions in our schools.

Yeah.. better things to be doing.. like hanging out in donut shops all night, chatting each other up in parking lots behind buildings where a supervisor driving by won't see, and taking 6 cars full of thugs to pull over a 16-year old pimply-faced teenager who weighs 125 lbs soaking wet with boots on.

I spend probably 12 hours a day driving around in the city where I live.. I see all kinds of things.. daylight drug deals..people packing weapons walking down the street, domestic brawls, even the occasional shooting... what I don't see is cops doing a blessed thing even when obvious serious criminal activity is going down.. they just can't be arsed.

I agree.. I drive a 17,000lb dump truck.. an old one that's pretty badly maintained... with another full 16,000l lbs of load on it, I have to stomp the accellerator to the floor to take off at a stoplight, and the thing roars so bad in the cab I can feel my teeth rattle.. and half these bikes out there.. not just Harleys, but also similar styled bikes by other makers... when they take off from a light, I can't even hear my obnoxious truck at full roar because their tiny little bikes are producing ear-bleeding levels of obnoxiousness.

Now, any *car* in this city runs even half that loud, they're pulled over by the police and ticketed. I'm pretty sure that if the guy I work for (who owns the truck) wasn't an ex-cop himself, my truck would be pulled over for violating noise ordinances... So why the hell do all these obnoxious biker pricks get a free pass?

This, AC, is one of the better statements of the truth as I feel it that I have ever had the good fortune to read online. Kudos.

No kidding. Over the past 10 years, I've lived in environments ranging from fairly good sized cities (300k+ population) to "Out in the sticks", and the *only* time I've had any sort of real choice of ISP was in Columbus, Ohio..(population 700k+)

Unless, of course, you consider "going back to dialup" to be a "choice".. which frankly I don't.