Correct, I never trusted his motives. Take a few minutes to look at the guy's history and you'll see why.

Making money is far from evil. Lying, cheating and/or stealing to make money is evil. There's a big difference. If he would have said, "I also plan to build a pipeline along this corridor to move water from one location to another" while he was crowing about his wonderful plan to build this wind farm, his reception would have been entirely different. It was a lie of omission, and he planned to use the land -- taken from its owners using eminent domain -- for huge personal gain. So you have lying AND stealing. Hence this scheme was evil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickens_Plan#Pickens.27_motives

I think the "technical problems" may be that he couldn't get the okay to build his pipeline along the same corridor. I never trusted his motives, and I remember reading a pretty detailed article on this shortly after he announced his grandiose plan.

I have a 21" CRT secondary and a 46" LCD-TV primary. Used to be a pair of 21's, but I lucked into an upgrade. Now I just have to sit reeeealllllyyy far back.

However, my highest monitor count (not counting kvm's, xwindows, virtual desktops, vnc sessions, etc etc blah) was 4. 21/21/17/14. Two for browsing, one for coding, one for MUDding. Ah, those were the days.

Of course, I had to buy a second desk to have room to do anything, but that's a different story...

The surface of the earth could very well feed everyone, if it wasn't for profit hungry empires trying to prop up their inefficient business models along with their inefficient farming methods.

And I hope your troll mod wasn't for pointing out that the ethanol regulations drove up food prices, because you're right, it did. The problem with ethanol is it's based on corn, which is just about the most inefficient source of it. But a profit hungry empire is trying to prop up their inefficient business model, so here we are, suddenly having rising food prices because all the corn is going into ethanol. Base it on something better (hemp/algae/prairie grass), all of which can be grown on less desirable land, and watch prices fall while still maintaining the biofuel component.

Oh, wait, can't have that, those products don't have an empire yet...

Bah, humbug.
Does this mean we can PLEASE break up/ditch/ignore the Corn Cartel... sorry, lobbying group... which is probably the single biggest reason that biofuel is expensive and inefficient and such a bad idea?
Although I'm unhappy to see Shells move, I can't blame them... they aren't really a R&D outfit, and other startups are taking over the role of expanding wind/hydro/solar and making it profitable. Now, if they would just dump all that money into deciding that algae (or, gasp, hemp!) is a much more efficient biofuel, and help get rid of Big Corn, then everyone could win...

48 hours plus? Pft. I'm running that right now.
Chronic insomnia, and pills just screw with my head too much. So I frequently skip a night or two of sleep. I'm used to it. I can go up to 3 days before I start to feel any effects or need caffeine. Back in my university days, I figured out the admin code to the coffee machine, since I was told "if you can hack it, you can have it". 2 litre bottles of cafe mocha = no sleep for a week.
In other news, my fiance can fall asleep in less than 5 minutes, and I hate her for it with a fiery, burning passion.

We do. It's called the sun. We're just too impatient to wait for the energy to collect, and too impractical to put serious effort into collecting it.

I thought I'd seen it all. OMGPonies... a front page filled with nothing but XP bashing... etc etc etc...

But, seriously. A front page story complaining that you could /download/ something? Sweet zombie jesus on a stick, WTF is wrong with you guys??? "I could download this thing... I think I'll write to /. about it!".

Articles like this make me firmly believe that we should start allowing natural selection again.

On a similar and yet much cooler note, I encourage everyone to visit www.Expedition360.com , a most awesome site about a brits attempt to circumnavigate the globe only via unsuplemented human power. Read through the entire diary and you'll feel like you've read a great and fufilling book. Highly, highly recommended.

I know the point you're trying to make, I just think it's a load of shit. For many reasons, the foremost of which being that software is a different beast than other normal products for which one could validly consider bundling to be an antitrust action. The bottom line of an OS is that you NEED a browser in order to get online to get your choice of browser. Simply not bundling a browser is not the answer, because 50% of the populace is too dumb, or somehow not easily able, to get a browser loaded onto their system on their own. And it creates a ridiculous overhead too. You think the Mozilla Foundation can afford to print and send CDs all over the globe? Or are you just going to trust the guy at the Quik-E-Mart who burned you a copy of Firefox when he says he didn't put a trojan in there?

Yes, IE may suck, but a new computer needs a starting point, and IE is it. And as long as MS doesn't do something to stop you from loading any browser of your choice, there's really no reason to bitch.

And if you want Firefox/Safari/every other browser in existance loaded on to Windows, does that mean you're in favour of the same thing being done to *nix? I wonder how big those distro downloads will be with 50 browsers preloaded. And I wonder how confused all the noobs and old folks will be when they go to open the internet and there's 50 different icons there staring at them, and every one behaves differently.

Forced browser bundling is a retarded idea. Everyone has choice now, and that's what counts.

I'd like to live in your fictional universe. That would be great.

MS in NO WAY stops Mozilla, or Apple, or anyone else, from loading their browser onto Windows. Anyone can go and load up any browser they damn well feel like. Ergo, MS is not using their position to harm anyones ability to sell (or give away) browsers.

Seriously... should we next force Coke to include a can of Pepsi in every 6-pack?

I know, let's just remove IE from Windows entirely... oh, wait, how would people go download Firefox or Safari or Chrome then?

This crap just drives me nuts... an OS needs to have a browser included. The fact that so many people stay with IE isn't a result of evil dominance, it's a result of people being to lazy to install something new. MS is in no way stopping people from using FF or GC or AS or anything else, and until they are, I really wish people would STFU and stop this pointless whining.

I really hope MS does start shipping a EU version of Windows, sans browser, and with a little note coming up to say "thank you for trying to access the internet. The EU has prohibited us from helping you with this. Please go find a CD of Firefox and then install it. Hope you don't live in a rural area!"

The DNS error hijacking, that is. I was going to consider switching to Charter, but I see someone has posted that they've started doing this as well.

Are there any free DNS services out there that happily return valid results instead of redirecting you?