> Far too many nations either have their money fixed against the dollar (China being the best example), or
> manipulate (I will exclude for the time, but easy enough to show and prove).

The USian economy is very week and unable to maintain its own position in the financial market. Those countries who are maintaining parity with the USian dollar mostly also have dynamic rapidly growing economies (ie China) that are effectively using the blinkered "reduce costs" mentality that is common to the economic thinking of most of the Western World to attract new business, improve the quality of their manufacturing and technology base, and grow their economy.

While I don't like what they're doing, they should at least be congratulated for being highly successful at building their own economy - and more fool us for letting them do it that way!

Nothing will change in that respect so long as the primary economic focus of Western economies is on external trade..

> Have a tax break or temp subsidy for energy STORAGE. This group of ppl will buy excess electricity and sell
> it at a higher rate and provider the electricity that is needed.

Expecting tax-payers to subsidize a second-rate solution is not a valid answer.

Ultimately what you really need are cheaper methods of generating electricity.

> Thank the engineers who designed and built the power grids for that — but don't thank them too much. Their main goal was reliability; keeping
> the cost of electricity down was less of a concern. That's in part why so many people in the United States complain about high electricity prices.

Can't agree with that. In New Zealand the main goal of the engineers who designed and built the electricity infrastructure also was reliability. The cost of electricity in NZ, while it has increased massively in recent times since the electricity industry was deregulated, is relatively low - and continues to be cheaper than in the USA, Canada, the UK, and most if not all of Europe.

> Some armchair economists (and a quite a few real ones) have long argued that the solution is deregulation. After all, many other US industries
> have been deregulated — take, for instance, oil, natural gas, or trucking — and greater competition in those sectors swiftly brought prices
> down. Why not electricity?"

Deregulation is not the solution.Many essential aspects of infrastructure were deregulated and privatized by successive right-wing governments over the years. The net result in each and every case was increased prices being charged to consumers, and/or reduced quality of service.

So, we can certainly say from experience that "deregulation" is NOT a valid solution for problems in infrastructure areas that are a natural monopoly such as electricity, gas, water, telephone lines, rail, roads, and television. At least deregulation is not a valid solution unless you want to see prices triple!

This sort of legal bullshit only demonstrates how bad the USian legal system is!

Yeah - double doors do seem to be the sensible way to prevent dust blowing in so long as both can't be open at the same time (which would kinda defeat the purpose of having double doors). :)

The idea of keeping the cases of the computers in a (relatively) dust free environment separate from where the people using the computers are situated is also a good solution.

not sure if both are needed. :)

This is rich! Microsoft's software has the poorest interoperability capability of all Office Productivity suites.

Why should MS bitch about this when it's own software cannot even open basic documents created in other office productivity suites?

1600*1200 at 80Hz in a 19" monitor is good for most purposes.

Unfortunately Most LCD screens don't have 1200 vertical pixels in the same physical space as CRT monitors, and their images don't seem to be as sharp. :(

> This can't really surprise anyone. I'm sure there are plenty of things our
> government has kept from us either "for our own good" (their rationale for
> hiding their actions) and for national security reasons (we can't disclose
> everything).

1/ it shouldn't surprise anyone who has been watching the actions of the USA over the last 10 years because the government of that country has proven that it cannot be trusted.

2/ The government of the USA demonstrates repeatedly that it doesn't trust the people that it was elected to represent. Oh that's right - it isn't actually a real democracy. Their "president" is appointed and rules by fiat!

3/ It isn't "our" government. This is an international forum. Please respect that fact.

> But how much do we really want to know? No matter how much they
> tell us we always suspect more ... and the conspiracy theorists
> will only use the truth to build even more elaborate plots of
> imaginative intrigue and nefarious actions.

The people of the USA *should* want to know everything that is being done in their name. If they don't take ownership of the actions done in their name by holding their representatives responsible then they should not be surprised when the rest of the world takes action by, for example, obliterating a landmark building in New York.

This latest revelation only demonstrates that the actions taken by the USA since 11/9/2001 have really been happening all along, just not so visibly.

I think that the facts of the case clearly support Novell.

I think that Novell should win for multiple reasons:

1/ that the copyrights did not transfer to the S.C.O.

2/ that NewSCO tried to get Novell to assign the copyrights, that Novell didn't want to do so and therefore NewSCO took Novell to court in an attempt to take the copyrights from Novell.

3/ that NewSCO has been such a slimy corporation and has been so malicious to Novell that NewSCO doesn't deserve to get the copyrights.

HOWEVER, I think that given the jury may consist of persons who may be lacking in education, and may potentially be scammers themselves (you can't tell what the predisposition of any jury person is due to not actually knowing who they are and what their background is) there is at least a chance that NewSCO's lawyers may have been able to pull the wool down far enough so that at least one person on the Jury might just have believed NewSCO's pathetic bleating.

I agree - such a stupid case as this could only ever have been strung out this long in the USA. Every country that actually has a savvy and just legal system would have thrown out this case as having no chance of success and therefore not worth following through.

There are issues that need to be considered, and risks that need to be accepted when contemplating a migration over to using Gmail.

1/ a large organisation currently using MS Exchange will most likely end up needing to replace their existing server(s) with potentially more servers in order to go with a gmail solution - especially if a single-sign-on solution is wanted.

2/ internet bandwidth costs will dramatically increase.

3/ there is presently no easy way to walk away from using gmail if a decision is made at a later date to move away from gmail.

Has Microsoft been rudderless and uninspired/uninspiring for 10 years already?

More than 4/5ths of a Kilometer too!

4/5 sounds more than 1/2. And Kilometers are the new metric system that everyone (except the USA - funny that) is adopting.

> So why are we not building these reactors?"

Because the USA wanted to build nuclear bombs.

Have you considered simply putting an advert into a major daily newspaper?

What about advertising on websites such as Seek.co.nz, etc.

If you're looking to employ someone those are normally the sorts of things to do.

Why is it that, over the generations - including the more recent Women's Liberated generations - both women and men perceived males to have greater intelligence than females?

And puhlease don't give any of the pathetic anti-male "patriarchy" bullshit because I don't buy into it as a reason for why one gender should be perceived as being more intelligent than the other.

If possible stick to presenting actual empirical data from actual research.