You mean like Obama? I couldn't agree more.

I know, right? Pesky "freedom" and "personal responsibility." Can't have any of that!

There is just no way that the dumbed-down, "safe" fireworks allowed to be sold here are going to start a fire in the average neighborhood. And I guess you never thought about standing by with a fire extinguisher when you set some off (I do).

Seriously. Take your "there oughta be a law" attitude and move somewhere else. I don't need you as a neighbor.

Because you are a myopic idiot. The great evils forced on Americans by government are nearly always bipartisan efforts. Otherwise they wouldn't happen.

Then again, who am I to deprive you of your comfortable generalization? Go ahead and believe whatever you like, it's not like you vote here.

So can I stop undressing and getting sexually assaulted at the airport now?

I took not only Algebra II, but AP Calculus (AB) in high school. I never thought it made me all that special.

You're going to be in for a world of hurt if you hit college without Algebra II, if you want to do anything even vaguely technical.

It doesn't take a lot to look "good enough," when you're developing for a 42" display at 1920x1080 (a whopping 50-ish dpi!).

I'm still using an Audigy 2 ZS I purchased in 2004. My 2007-ish motherboard sound device is turned off in BIOS. Why? Two reasons:

1) Motherboard sound is full of noise and glitches (pops and clicks).

2) Even more importantly: The onboard sound hardware *actively interferes* with sound under Linux. I have to turn it off, or I have mysterious and disruptive sound problems. Such as fmod using 100% of CPU cycles.

I can only speculate on the real cause of #2, but if experience is any guide, it's due to half-baked hardware that only "works" with a Windows-only driver.

This is why I put "works" in quotes: Even when integrated sound hardware works under Windows, it doesn't necessarily work all that well. I bought the Sound Blaster because the integrated audio on the PC I built in 2003 was also flaky.

The Audigy 2 ZS works absolutely fine under Ubuntu, so that's what I use. Yes... ... I have zero problems with this card and PulseAudio. But the onboard sound device is a piece of junk. Motherboard manufacturers throw in the cheapest junk they think they can get away with. They certainly don't give a damn whether it works in Linux.

To borrow a turn of phrase, the important thing is that you've found a way to feel superior to both.

You covered the main drawback to such monitors - price.

Did you also catch the insanely low refresh rate (25 or 41 Hz) and rather high 50 ms (or 25 ms, depending on how you measure) response time? Anything involving moving images would be a streaky, smeared mess. That said, it does seem odd that nothing similar is offered today for photo & graphic design folks.

FWIW, review of the VP2290b here: http://www.trustedreviews.com/monitors/review/2004/06/30/ViewSonic-VP2290b-High-Resolution-TFT/p1