ahh.. Cognitive dissonance.. The most common manifestation of the insanity that is modern liberalism.. Given an indisputable fact, most liberals do the old "lalalalalalalalalala I can't hear you..." or better yet calls the person expressing the FACT that is contrary to the liberal's world view a racist, hateful, or any number of nasty labels.. This gets really annoying to those of us who live in "real-ville"....

Good God!! If MS (or the h/w mfgrs) *think* they can get away with something like this, they must be smoking the same waky-tabaky that Comrade Obama is smoking, that has him asserting that he's spent less than any president in modern history, or somesuch bat-s**t insane claim like that.. Since all of the machines I've bought in the last 10 years or so have come with some kind of MS Windows on them, I've always, until just recently, made them dual-boot with whatever flavor of Linux I was into at the time. Now, they aren't even dual-boot'ed, they get wiped, and they get either Debian, if for my own use, or Ubuntu if for the wife's use. For the one or two Windows apps I can't do without, and won't run under Wine, I have a WindowsXP Virtualbox VM for these holdouts. The day I go to buy a machine and find that I'm locked out of putting MY CHOICE of OS on it, is the day I get PISSED!!!

Which means you're stuck with Windows... I won't buy a laptop unless it can run Linux without major heartache... THIS is why I stick with Dell Latitudes, they run Linux flawlessly and EVERYTHING works fine under Linux...

Speaking for Dell, if you stay with the Latitude/Precision line, they don't have "shovelware", simply the drivers for everything on the system, and any management utilities for fingerprint reader etc.. Having said that, in my last day-job, we still wiped new Latitude systems, and installed our image via Acronis Snapdeploy.

Yeah.. you're right.. *somebody* needs to tell Comrade Obama that.. He's going apeshit getting his b.s. unconstitutional stuff done via executive order.. He also should be advised that he's the POTUS NOT King Barack the First... Oh who AM I kidding.. Both parties in CONgress could care less if he runs the country into the ground...

Kinda curious on how they intend to apply this "law" to somebody OUTSIDE Malaysia "cyber-bullying" someone inside Malaysia.. The denizens of /. know how well laws like this work when applied to a world-wide medium like the internet, namely THEY DON'T!! I guess the old wisdom that you have to have 75% of your brain removed, 100% of your honesty to become a politician is true..

America is broken... May God Bless whats left of it...

Am in Las Vegas, and was going to drive up to the center of the path to get the full effect. I decided not to waste the gas (a 240 mile round trip), and just discovered that I'm not going to miss all that much.. The NASA page with percentages of totality showed that where I was going (Zion National Park) was 96% coverage and simply staying here in Las Vegas, I get 92%.... Don't have any welders goggles, so I'm using the old "two cardboard pieces with a pinhole in one".. Went out about 15 min ago and sure enough, theres a little munch out of the sun.. Its 6pm now and our max is reached at about 6:35 per the chart..

Paul sucked up a majority of delegates here in Nevada, I forget the exact numbers, but Romney may have the vote, but Paul has the delegates.. This should be VERRRRY interesting.. That is, assuming we actually *have* a November election.. A whistleblower from DHS recently reported that there is a plan afoot by the Obama regime to pull a "Reichstag Event", which would allow him to declare martial law, postponing (or cancelling) the election.. Funny that.. I've been expecting to hear reports of this ever since he took office... Believe it or don't.. Either way, America is swirling down the drain.. Not a whole heck of a lot we can do to prevent it...

I've been licensed since 1976, Tech from 1976 to 1989, Extra since then. I went kinda inactive for the last few years, due to work, and getting my fill of tech-y stuff playing with Linux. But now since I'm retired, I've become very interested in SDR and the Gnomeradio aspects of the hobby. Just before I went inactive, I got involved with IRLP (Internet Repeater Linking Project) and Echolink. You may be right about the decreasing numbers of new ops, but from what I'm seeing locally, the ones who ARE discovering ham radio seem to be more interested in aspects of the hobby like SDR rather than the old school stuff, like contesting, prefix chasing.. I'll just say I disagree with you on the "dying hobby" claim you make...

K7DGF