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Comment Re:That's change I can believe in (Score 1) 244

In addition, the subpoena was issued on January 23rd, which was indeed after the Obama administration took power, so Obama's acting AG or AG Holder would have had to sign off on it at some point. While perhaps the original case was started by the Bush DOJ, this subpoena was signed off on by an Obama DOJ pick.

I would find it hard to believe that either the Bush or Obama administrations would demand such a subpoena without a pretty bulletproof case, because of the attention paid to it. Even the conservative aggregator Hot Air takes Indymedia's side on this.

Comment Re:Sony has ALWAYS Gimped laptops... (Score 1) 198

Dell's recovery CDs, however, are typically just OEM images of the OS included with the machine. They include all the extra software on another disc -- so if the automated recovery doesn't work on a Dell, just fire up the disc.

Lost your disc? No problem, because Dell will ship you a new one free of charge once per computer.

Contrast this with Sony, who doesn't ship recovery discs AT ALL, sometimes even without the Acer option to burn your own recovery discs -- which few people do anyways. Then, if you want to get recovery discs for their machines, you have to PURCHASE THEM for $20 or so.

I recommend AGAINST Sony's computer equipment under all circumstances -- it's just crap. Get yourself a Dell where the replacement parts are cheap, the in-home service is good, and the recovery CDs are free.

Comment Re:Guilty conscience? (Score 5, Insightful) 790

No, there is not anything wrong with spending 2 million dollars on a car. It's YOUR money, so if you can afford to and choose to spend 166 years of minimum wage earnings on it, be my guest. Jealousy will get you nowhere closer to owning one of your own -- or, if you're like me, you can just ogle the Bugatti while you drive off in your '05 Ford Escape which gets acceptable gas mileage, handles great in the snow, and did not add $155,000 to the government balance sheets to support welfare recipients, public schools, the police and so on.

Comment Re:Guilty conscience? (Score 5, Insightful) 790

Still, the sales tax alone on it is $155,500 at 5.5% which I'd pay if I bought this thing here in Wisconsin*, unless you're somehow going to smuggle it into the country to not pay sales tax, which would prevent you from properly registering it.. what good is a $2,100,000 car if you can't drive it anywhere?

* Hah -- like a Bugatti dealer would ever set up shop in Wisconsin. :)

I'm awfully tired of this jealous-of-people-with-money attitude. They probably earned it. More than likely they contribute vast sums to charitable causes so they don't have to pay taxes on those sums come death or tax day. If you want the cool stuff they get to have and experiences they get to have, earn it; don't get your jollies off telling THEM what to do with it.

Comment Re:Battle.net, I lose my faith in thee (Score 2, Interesting) 737

I couldn't agree more. I'm a bot author (the chat and channel-management type, not the game hosting type), so I have a front row view of how Blizzard has created a market for these third-party programs by keeping Battle.net outdated and stagnant. Chat bots allow you to perform really basic tasks, like keeping someone you don't like permanently OUT of your channel, or disseminating more than one line of information to your guildmates; Battle.net does not support any of this.

In the world of custom game hosting, bots allow for automated hosting from a high-speed Internet line that can better handle the traffic (since Warcraft III games are peer to peer once they start) and detailed stat-tracking that the Battle.net system could provide, but does not. Battle.net is constantly fighting these improvements contributed by members of the community, rather than embracing them, under the guise of preventing cheating, even though even the chat and channel-management bots need a valid (purchased!) CD key in order to perform their duties and have no impact on in-game play.

Comment Re:I do this already (Score 1) 171

It is indeed out of date, but I was able to get it working with FF 3 without too much issue... I can't remember exactly what it took, but it works well to this date (and the original "image" doesn't need to be updated when FF releases minor revisions, since I install FF over the top of the FFDeployed installation to finalize all the Windows shortcuts and things like that.)

Comment I do this already (Score 3, Interesting) 171

At UW-Milwaukee's dorms, I used FFDeploy to do just this: create a silent Firefox installer for student and faculty machines with some built-in bookmark buttons for our student service websites, e-mail system and so on.

Doing this saves time and installs FF with a nice student-friendly UI right off the bat -- very useful in converting otherwise IE-centric students who don't care what browser they're using to Firefox.

Comment Enough already (Score 1) 136

That's not a gaming PC. Where's the SLI? Where's the upgradeability and massive hard drive space? Where's the modern graphics card -- the 9800 GT is a few generations old already, just imagine where it'll be a year or two down the road.

Stop with the silly "green" crap, seriously. This system is at best a midrange small form-factor PC with an inflated price tag. While it might play current games, it's nowhere near future-proof, and its price tag isn't low enough to justify that fact.

Comment Re:And of course we can expect the legislation to. (Score 4, Insightful) 1505

Mod parent up. People who want to raise taxes on evil "big business" seem to not understand that the end result is that those evil "big businesses" will have to fire people or increase their prices to remain competitive successful.

Big businesses employ big numbers of people. This concept is lost on most Democrats and populists that scapegoat big corporations. You can't just blame big companies for everything and expect that they'll ignore this and carry on!

Here in Wisconsin we are looking at a number of laws that will substantially increase taxes on corporations doing business in the state. As a direct result of the anti-business climate in the state, a number of businesses have either relocated operations that were in Wisconsin or actively decided to decline to locate their headquarters in the state -- for example, our famous Miller Brewing Company, formerly headquartered in Milwaukee, merged with Coors of Denver and decided to relocate their headquarters to Chicago.

Comment Re:Already there (Score 3, Informative) 249

Free as in beer, not as in speech. The article lists a number of alternatives with varying degrees of maturity and practical utility...

For example, I'm not going to install KDE on Windows just to read PDFs, and if I'm going to recommend an alternative PDF reader to one of my Average Joe friends, customers or relatives I'm not going to have them download one without an installer or from a website whose name has nothing to do with the product (MuPDF) that looks like it was designed circa 1997. Appearance is everything, you know, which is something that I think has greatly contributed to Firefox's success: both the product and the website look smooth, classy and refined.

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